****Excellent ***Good **Fair *Poor : AUDIOCASSETTES

“Rabbit Run,” a novel by John Updike. Read by Wolfram Kandinsky. (Unabridged; 8 cassettes, 12 hours.) Books on Tape. The first of Updike’s trilogy about Harry (Rabbit) Engstrom, sometime high school basketball star in a small, central Pennsylvania city, is minutely accurate in its detailings of drab lives. Rabbit is more comprehensible than likable, yet his moments of compassion and his glimpses of something larger and better just eluding his grasp are touching. It is a superb novel. Kandinsky’s reading is, however, rather monotonously whining, and while the whine is central to these lives, it deprives Rabbit of something of his inarticulate and medium-IQ but deep-feeling masculinity. Information (800) 626-3333. ** 1/2