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Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation.
Its hero is Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler's edge.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (2/5/2026)
...n much reading done due to family with health issues requiring my assistance, but have had a lot of windshield time to listen to audiobooks. Finished Rabbit, Run by John Updike which won the Pulitzer in 1960. It reminded me of an adulting Catcher in the Rye.
-Lana_Maskus
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/22/2026)
...es Mustich's 1000 Books to Read Before You Die. I'm also doing Nick Senger's A Chapter A Day read of Anna Karenina. When I'm driving I'm listening to Rabbit, Run by John Updike.
-Lana_Maskus
"Brilliant and poignant ... By his compassion, clarity of insight, and crystal-bright prose, [John Updike] makes Rabbit's sorrow his and our own." —The Washington Post
"The power of the novel comes from a sense, not absolutely unworthy of Thomas Hardy, that the universe hangs over our fates like a great sullen hopeless sky. There is real pain in the book, and a touch of awe." —Esquire
"A lacerating story of loss and of seeking, written in prose that is charged with emotion but is always held under impeccable control." —Kansas City Star
This information about Rabbit, Run was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, in 1932. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Updike died in January 2009.
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