This unusual fictional memoir - in good part autobiographical - narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of a penniless British writer among the down-and-outs of two great cities. The Parisian episode is fascinating for its expose of the kitchens of posh French restaurants, where the narrator works at the bottom of the culinary echelon as dishwasher, or plongeur. In London, while waiting for a job, he experiences the world of tramps, street people, and free lodging houses. In the tales of both cities we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and of society.

Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his—or any other—generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.

To read 

book

Rachael

Romcoms

All time favorite films

American–Canadian science fiction television series from 1997–2007

American science fiction television series from 1993-1999

Sci fi & stuff

American teen drama mystery-thriller television series.

Guilty pleasures

Films to view

Laughing 

2009 American legal drama television series

To read

More lists by Rachael

Romcoms

All time favorite films

Sci fi & stuff

Guilty pleasures

Films to view

Laughing

Maybe

Fave bands

Flemish