Rabbit, Run

Open Book reminded me of another classic book-I-haven't-read-yet a few weeks ago. A listener rang the show wanting to have some romantic comedy novels recommended to her, and Mariella asked Tim Lott for suggestions. Now I have a lot of time for Tim Lott (if you'll ignore the pun) because I really enjoyed Rumours of a Hurricane and his latest book The Seymour Tapes. (Although I've never been able to face The Scent of Dried Roses - another candidate for this blog someday? Maybe.) Anyway, he stretched the definition of romantic comedy quite some way because one of the books he recommended was:

Rabbit, Run

by John Updike

I've read enough of it to know what a great writer Updike is - although that's not saying much: it only takes a few sentences. Less, maybe...

"Boys are playing basketball around a telephone pole with a backboard bolted to it. Legs, shouts. The scrape and snap of Keds on loose alley pebbles seems to catapult their voices high into the moist March air blue above the wires."

I used that in a literary opening lines quiz I compiled for Quizardry.com. As John Carey put it: "He has the kind of prose style that unzips the loose covers from words, so that they pop out sharp and shiny..."

There's no doubt I'm missing out here. Updike not only created a memorable character in Rabbit Angstrom, but chronicled his life story through the last half of the Twentieth Century in four novels: Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit At Rest (1990) - the last two winning Pulitzer Prizes.