In Rabbit, Run by John Updike, Harry Angstrom, a.k.a. Rabbit, is equal parts terrible husband and father. A washed up ex-high school basketball star who can’t face adulthood, he has an affair and abandons his wife, a recovering alcoholic, which causes the entire family to fall apart. For the story of another bad dad, read The Great Stork Derby, based on an actual contest in which a husband pressures his wife to have babies for cash and, fifty years later, learns the true value of fatherhood. Read more about the book in NOVELS.
