Books that have never been officially published in Great Britain are an absolute fucker to get hold of at a decent price.

I know this, because I have spent several months scoping out second-hand copies of Licks Of Love by John Updike, the collection of short stories that also contains his mini-sequel to the Rabbit novels, Rabbit Remembered. I have pined away for Rabbit Angstrom late at night, sad and lonely in my bed, with only a list of unobtainable hardbacks priced between £30 and £120 for company. Ebay just wanted to fuck with me; wanted to show me its glorious merchandise and then piss all over everything by revealing that the only one for less than a fiver was just a fucking audiobook…

That was until I discovered the ‘Make An Offer’ button of course. Even then I got a little carried away with myself and bid $25, forgetting that the world’s economy has crumbled and sterling is no longer like Magic Millionaire Dust on the other side of the Atlantic.

But still, the last few (very busy) days have been spent catching up with a few old friends… Nelson Angstrom, Harry’s social worker son; Janice, his wife, now married to Ronnie Harrison, and the was-she-wasn’t-she illegitimate daughter, Annabelle.

I was getting stuck into it during a quiet spell during a volunteer shift this evening (my other personality is a theatre luvvie) and someone asked me what I was reading. I held it up and suddenly she was all like “Oooh, is it… erotic?” Straight away I was all like “What? Nooo!” but with hindsight I may have appeared to protest too much. It had never even occurred to me that the title could be misconstrued as lit-porn, what with me being such an innocent bundle of sweetness and light an’ all. I spent the rest of the night trying to crouch behind the front desk so no-one got the wrong idea.

On the bus home though, I was thinking about how unfulfilling the latest developments have been. I liked that Updike hadn’t told us for sure whether or not Annabelle was Rabbit’s daughter or not, right the way through four lengthy novels. And I liked the uncertainty of Nelson’s future as a recovering drug addict. Generally speaking, stories that tie up every last little loose end seem a bit contrived. We are all ignorant of so much in the lives of those around us that it seems real, if imperfect, to die without ever discovering certain family members. (Any woman left unsupervised at Stockport Golf Club between 1955 and 1995 could have had a child by my grandfather.) Plus, I abhor the whole visited-in-a-dream bullshit that gets relied upon time and time again.

I’m only half way through Rabbit Remembered though, so I won’t condemn it yet. It’s certainly as beautifully constructed and eloquently written as Updike’s others, and I suspect that as it pans out, I’ll become more engrossed and care less and less about a few unknown quantities.

When I think about it more, I’ll probably decide that what I was really missing was Harry Angstrom himself, the perennial frustrated loser. I hated the guy at first, and came to love him as he aged in Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest. He kinda suited the impotence of old age, whereas as a younger man he just seemed stupid and ineffectual, thinking with his penis. And to be fair, he did get a fair bit of sex back in the day.

Maybe Licks Of Love is masquerading as erotica in more ways than one. While it’s no pornography, it is selling itself on a character that isn’t even there.

John Updike - Licks Of Love, featuring Rabbit Remembered
Publication date: 2000
Publisher: Knopf
Price then: $25
Price now: $25 (included overseas shipping)
Bought from: Ebay

From the synopsis: “Several old strands come at last together, and the dead man’s survivors fitfully entertain his memory while pursuing their own happiness over the edge of the millennium.”