Better relationships

Better relationships (English Rabbit Is Rich ) is a 1981 novel by John Updike .

It is the third novel in the five-part Rabbit series that focuses on the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a former high school basketball star. The series begins with Rabbit Heart and Under the Astronaut's Moon and ends with Rabbit at rest and with Rabbit, a return . Rabbit Is Rich received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1982 . The German translation by Barbara Henninges was published in 1983 .

action

June 1979: Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom has finally achieved a certain civic satisfaction and financial independence at the age of 46. He's put on a lot of weight and still hasn't left his hometown, the fictional Brewer, Pennsylvania . Harry, who at the end of the second part was still facing a professional and financial abyss, has now inherited his father-in-law and has taken over his Toyota representative. Business is doing brilliantly because in these times of the oil crisis, Americans are finally getting away from buying giant gasoline-slurping tin sleds and instead switching to the economical Japanese cars.

Harry may be rich, but some old problems remain. His wife drinks too much, his sexual fantasies are constantly troubling him, and his 22-year-old son Nelson, who unexpectedly comes home with a friend, seems unwilling to graduate from Kent State University . Nelson tries to get a responsible position in his father's business. Harry is against it in principle because he can neither recognize the necessary ways of dealing with customers in his son nor the necessary business sensitivity for which cars are in demand. The matter becomes particularly problematic when Nelson's pregnant friend Pru shows up and moves into the family's already cramped house. Soon the marriage of the two is planned and the wedding ceremony will take place within a short time.

Another problem runs through the whole novel. His lover Ruth, whom he left pregnant 20 years ago, has lost his sight, but has married an older man nearby and has now three children. One of these children could be his, Harry, and he always thinks it has to be a daughter because he is so dissatisfied with his son. This question is not clearly clarified until the end. It is taken up again in the fifth and final volume of the Rabbit series Rabbit Remembered , which takes place after Harry's death.

Harry and Janice have now become members of a newly founded country club, where the city's nouveau riche come together. He plays golf there and falls in love with the wife of another club member. Since he has made money, Harry finally decides to buy his own house that corresponds to his new high social position.

Towards the end of the novel - in January 1980 - three married couples who are friends spend a weekend in the Antilles, where an agreed exchange of partners takes place in one night. The next day, Harry and his wife received news of the birth of their granddaughter and the flight of their son shortly before the birth of his daughter back to the university and into the arms of a friend who is also the friend of his newly wedded wife. Harry and Janice rush back home.

literature

• John Updike: Better conditions (English Rabbit Is Rich). 1983
• Kindler's new literary dictionary. CD-ROM 2000