John Updike : novels 1986-1990 : Roger's version ; Rabbit at rest
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references.

Roger's version (1986): Roger Lambert, a middle-aged professor of divinity, is stuck in his office by Dale Kohler, a young computer scientist who believes that technical advances in computing shows evidence of God's existence. Then a theological-scientific debate ensues, and Roger employs wicked strategies to disembarrass Dale of his faith. But Dale's passion turns to his erotic attraction to Esther, Roger's much younger wife, that takes her away from him and into Dale's bed. The novel, a majestic allegory of faith and reason, ends as a black comedy of revenge, for this is Roger's side of the triangle described by Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter--made new for a disbelieving age.

Rabbit at rest (1990): Now in his mid-fifties, ex-basketball player Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom has acquired heart trouble and has settled into leisured obsolescence, dividing his time between Pennsylvania and the Valhalla Village retirement community in Florida. But alongside his golfing, junk-food consumption, and other forms of ease there loom unavoidable markers of Rabbit's human fragility and his mortality.

The National Book Critics Circle Award (Fiction), 1990