But it is absolutely true to the slightly amoral, excessive, hungry spirit of the Rabbit series.

This crazed, immoderately layered glare of specifics is, in some ways, unmeet in a book of farewell. And Updike's style is eternally young too-as dour and down as Rabbit is feeling, the book is a grabbing gluttony of detail, about Florida and Pennsylvania and angiography and golf and modern car radios and motels and TV programs. Sex, in Updike, is as much youth as anything, what always will be young Pm says as much to Harry afterwards. It is the symbol of Rabbit-in-life, of accumulation and unearned grace (as the junk-food closing up his arteries is the symbol of his impending death, dispersal). This central indiscretion is what powers the little plot there is in the book. Between them, Harry's other strongest life-force briefly and unexpectedly kicks in as well, involving a one-night mutual consolation, in bed, with Nelson's wife Pru. The candy, salty snacks, and fried foods he stuffs into himself-Updike's prose about this orgy of junk-eating is unforgettably un judging-bring on two heart attacks. But Harry effectively is beyond the social net: his days are colored by rays of doom, melancholy, desuetude-a winding-down he fights mostly with the only appetite still strong in him, a taste for terrible junk food. Wife Janice is having late stirrings of independence, studying for a real-estate license.

His son Nelson has become a cocaine addict and has run the family Toyota dealership irretrievably to ground. Updike finishes up his Rabbit tetralogy here, with retired Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom in Florida half the year and then back in Pennsylvania-late in 1989: the last year of Rabbit's life, it turns out.

John updike rabbit at rest