Yesterday blogger Kimberly Campbell Moore (Eleven and a Half Years of Books) posted an entry titled “Rabbit At Rest—John Updike” in which she reacts to the fourth book in the Rabbit tetralogy and offers links to her responses to the other Rabbit novels.

She begins, “First off, for those of you here to read more of my Rabbit rantings, this might be a slightly disappointing blog post. While I was still not overly fond of Rabbit, something about him had softened so something about myself softened as well. Once that did, I was able to really, finally, appreciate why people rave about the Rabbit books. Updike is amazing in Rabbit at Rest. I’m not going to go back and try to read the others with this realization, as I don’t care to spend any more time with Rabbit Angstrom. But! I can see better now the reasons.

So, this post will probably be more about Updike and his writing than my hatred for that asshole, Rabbit Angstrom.”

She concludes, “Try reading the first one, if you can get past Rabbit’s asshole status in that one, then maybe you can stick it out to this one and end the series with the best book of the quartet in my opinion.”

Somewhere in between, she admits, “I actually found this book compelling and very readable” . . . despite her feelings about Rabbit. If that isn’t a testament to a great writer, I don’t know what is.