Rabbit Angstrom was a great high-school basketball player, but now he’s 23, married to an alcoholic wife, Janice, with a young son and a job as a salesman. He goes home one night and finds his wife drinking again, and decides to take off. He drives through the night from his home in Pennsylvania into West Virginia, then chickens out and turns around and goes back. He ends up at the house of his high-school basketball coach. After a long sleep, he goes out on the town with his coach and meets Ruth, a sometimes prostitute. Rabbit spends the night with her, then moves in. He stays with Ruth for two months, although he regularly plays golf with Eccles, an Episcopalian minister who’s trying to get him to go back to Janice.

When Eccles tells Rabbit that Janice is having a baby, Rabbit ditches Ruth and goes back to his wife. Ruth has a baby girl. Rabbit settles back into home, gets a job with Janice’s father and flirts with Eccles’ wife. When Eccles’ wife seems interested, Rabbit runs from her. The next week, when Janice is home, Rabbit gets mad at her and takes off again. He tries to find Ruth, but she’s not home. He calls Eccles and finds out Janice has accidentally drowned the baby while drunk. Rabbit goes back for the funeral, but during the ceremony, he takes off again, running back to Ruth. She’s pregnant with is child, so he goes outside and runs again.

A pathetic story about a pathetic man. Updike wrote three more Rabbit novels, and it amazes me that anyone would care enough to read them. Rabbit, Run was filled with graphic sex scenes and patches of stream-of-consciousness writing.