Rabbit also deals with his son, Nelson, who is addicted to drugs. This time, he summons the strength to save Judy from drowning even while succumbing to his failing heart, redeeming his earlier failure. The moment evokes a tragic moment in the series’ first book, Rabbit, Run, in which Rabbit lost his baby daughter Rebecca in an accidental drowning. One afternoon, Rabbit’s health issues culminate in a scare when he has a heart attack during a fishing excursion with his young granddaughter, Judy. He is chronically depressed, overweight, and pessimistic about what remains for him out in the world. During the winter, they retreat to Florida, but Rabbit finds the climate insufficient in restoring his health or spirits. He is now in retirement with his wife, Janice, whom he met in his twenties. No longer is he the basketball star of his youth nor is he struggling to keep a low-paying sales job for a boring kitchen appliance firm. The novel begins in 1988, four decades after Rabbit is first introduced as a high schooler. It was followed by a 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered, which is set after Rabbit’s death. The novel won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Like the other books in the series, Rabbit at Rest is an ironic take on the individual’s dissatisfaction with the constraints imposed by his social world, his era, and his mortality. His internal struggles manifest in tensions between his wife, son, and friends, which he ultimately strives to repair. Now an old man, Rabbit struggles with the challenges of late life while retreating annually from Pennsylvania to Florida. The fourth and last novel of his Rabbit Angstrom series, it chronicles the life of Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom just before the turn of the 1990s. Rabbit at Rest is a 1990 novel by American author and art and literary critic John Updike.

John updike rabbit at rest