Rabbit Is Rich

In the opulent twilight of the 1970s, John Updike's "Rabbit Is Rich" finds Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, once a restless seeker, seemingly settled into the quintessential American dream. Now a co-owner of Springer Motors, a thriving Toyota dealership in Brewer, Pennsylvania, Rabbit is enjoying the fruits of prosperity: a comfortable home, a trim wife, golf course weekends, and a seemingly endless flow of cash. He wears good suits and drives a nice car, the outward signs of a man who has "made it." Yet, beneath this veneer of success, a profound unease festers. Despite his material wealth and an outwardly stable existence, Rabbit is plagued by the ghosts of roads not taken, the lives he never lived, and a nagging sense of spiritual emptiness that even his accumulating riches cannot fill. As he navigates increasingly complex relationships with his wife Janice, his troubled son Nelson, and the remnants of his past, Rabbit grapples with the anxieties of aging, the shifting social mores of the era, and the enduring, elusive quest for meaning in a consumer-driven America. This Pulitzer-winning novel is a poignant, often humorous, and unflinchingly honest exploration of the American middle class and its discontents.