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People talk about the Rabbit tetralogy and they rarely acknowledge the fifth coda of a novella, included in this collection. It's called Rabbit, Remembered, and it isn't. This is because it's totally unnecessary. It's not bad, it's just irrelevant.

It picks up about a decade after Rabbit's death, and here come some spoilers for this and previous Rabbit books. (view spoiler)[Janice has married Ronnie Harrison, Rabbit's old frenemy and the widow of his end-of-life affair, Thelma, she of the golden showers. Nelson is ensconced in his mundane life as a counselor for the mentally ill. He's estranged from his wife Pru, she of the bizarre Rabbit pity fuck. Annabelle finally confirms that she's his half-sister by Rabbit's fling from the first book, Ruth. Over the course of the book Nelson will tentatively reunite with Pru, Annabelle will reveal that she was sexually abused by her stepfather - this plays no role in the story and I don't know why it's here - and Ronnie will continue to be an unmitigated dickhole. (hide spoiler)]

Updike revisits some of his favorite themes here: oblique references to incestual longing that he likes to drop and then skitter away from, and self-conscious references to contemporary events. (We're in the last days of the 1900s, and "Now the bitch is going to run" says one woman about First Lady Hillary Clinton.) The sex is mostly missing, which of course is sortof a relief since Updike's sex is mostly uncomfortable.

Nelson continues to be basically unpleasant. He's a good character: he means well and he tries, but he is not much of a person. He's small, like Rabbit was, but in a different way; he lacks Rabbit's grudging charisma.

Updike has a talent for seeing these small, unsuccessful people. He lived in Beverly, Massachusetts, where I went to high school and fled as quickly as possible, so I know first-hand that he had plenty of sources to draw on. That's a town of rabbits. It has nothing very interesting to offer, and neither does this book.