Rabbit, Run: John Updike

At the beginning of the book you sort of feel sorry for Rabbit because he is just starting to realize he has become ordinary after being a basketball star in high school. He realizes how much he detests his wife whom he married because he got her pregnant ( who is now expecting their second child) and one evening just drives away from everything. He Spends the night with his old basketball coach, who makes him feel like someone important again and meets a girl in a bar. He ends up living with her for a while and gets her pregnant also. His wife then gives birth to their daughter and he leaves the girlfriend (Ruth) to play the role of father again. Every attractive woman he comes across he believes is in love with him and he convinces himself that what he feels for them is love as well. He seems content for a couple weeks and then takes off again to go back to Ruth and finds her place empty. In the meantime we finally see the wife's perspective and see she is depressed and takes to drink to comfort herself on her immature husband. While intoxicated she tries bathing her new daughter and ends up drowning her. Rabbit comes back and is supportive until the funeral where people look at him in distaste. In anger he cries that the death was his wife's fault not him, which earns him looks of horror- once again he runs off and learns Ruth is pregnant with his child, but she doesn't want him either. The books ends with him running again from the mess he has made and responsibility. This was an interesting as well as infuriating book due to Rabbit's behaviour.