Where to start with John Updike

American novelist, 1932–2009. Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1982 and 1991 and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1964 and 1982.

Best John Updike book to start with: Rabbit Is Rich (1981), on 2 of the 17 lists it could have made.

Start with Rabbit, Run, because the four Rabbit novels are best read in order and this is the first. The lists place Rabbit Is Rich first, but that is the third book, and it only works if you have met Rabbit Angstrom in the earlier ones. Rabbit, Run was shortlisted for the National Book Award in 1961, and follows a former high school basketball star in Pennsylvania who walks out on his wife.

Rabbit Redux, from 1971, is set at the end of the 1960s. Rabbit Is Rich won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1982, and Rabbit at Rest won the Pulitzer in 1991. The index lists the four together as the Rabbit books, which is a fair way to think of them.

If you would like to try him outside the series, The Centaur won the National Book Award in 1964 and retells a Greek myth in a Pennsylvania high school. The Poorhouse Fair is his first novel, set in a home for the elderly. Both are shorter and stranger than the Rabbit books, and they suit readers who have taken to his style.