The Rabbit Hutch
Author: Tess Gunty
Published by: One World Publications
Pages: 352
Format: Hardback
My Rating ★★★
Published by: One World Publications
Pages: 352
Format: Hardback
My Rating ★★★
An online obituary writer. A young mother with a secret. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents. Separated by the thin walls of The Rabbit Hutch, a low-cost housing complex in the run-down Indiana town of Vacca Vale, these individual lives unfold.
But Blandine isn't like the other residents of her building. Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, she spends her hours reading Dante and dreaming about becoming a female mystic.
Until, that is, three sweltering days in July culminate in an act of violence that will change everything, and finally offer her a chance to escape. Savage and hilarious, The Rabbit Hutch is a piercing look at the power structures that shape us, and the tale of a young woman with irrepressible strength.
But Blandine isn't like the other residents of her building. Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, she spends her hours reading Dante and dreaming about becoming a female mystic.
Until, that is, three sweltering days in July culminate in an act of violence that will change everything, and finally offer her a chance to escape. Savage and hilarious, The Rabbit Hutch is a piercing look at the power structures that shape us, and the tale of a young woman with irrepressible strength.
My thoughts:
A big thank you to the publishers for sending me out an early edition of the book and inviting me to take part in the online read-along with Tandem Collective.
“On a hot night in Apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body. She is only 18 years old, but she has spent most of her life wishing for this to happen.” And so we tumble down the rabbit hole, Alice holding our hand along the way.
The ‘Rabbit Hutch’ is a cheap housing block, and we follow the lives of some of the residents, as they intersect, improbably linked by the figure of a deceased actress and a closed down automobile industry. Originally designed to house Zorn workers and christened La Lapinière, it’s now a run-down complex that no one ever really refers to as anything other than the Rabbit Hutch. The walls there “are so thin, you can hear everyone’s lives progress like radio plays.”
We see every person’s dark, soft, and vulnerable parts; the things they keep hidden from everyone—perhaps even themselves. This sense of eerie omnipresence permeates the entire book, often flinging us from scenes in the Rabbit Hutch to other parallel storylines.
What happens next is the gradual, chronology-hopping revelation of who Blandine is, what the mystics have to do with anything, how a glowing middle-aged male got himself involved in all this, and why so many human lives (and one goat) have converged on this one horrible moment.
The story’s main focus lies on Blandine, a former foster child who is obsessed with ancient martyrs and mystics and - until recently - was a gifted high school student by another name. Now she works at a local diner and shares a shabby apartment with three other aged-out foster children, all troubled varieties of teenage boy.
This started off so well. I was immediately intrigued by Blandine, I loved the initial world-building Gunty was doing and the bizarre cast of characters she was introducing, and I had very high hopes.
The more I read the more this became a truly mixed bag for me. At times I was racing through it and enjoying the oddness of the stories and the characters. At other times I was a little bit uninterested. My main problem with The Rabbit Hutch was that a significant portion of it seemed unnecessary and largely unrelated to the larger plot. Very few of the many perspectives are essential to the main story being told.
Gunty's writing style is extremely interesting, and the novel certainly ends with a bang, but I struggled to become fully invested through the middle portion of the book. Perhaps the main reason I didn’t enjoy this one as much as i wanted to was that I wish it focused more on Blandine. I was really captivated by her story and found myself sighing every time the next chapter would focus on a different character, some of whom just didn’t relate to the main plot.
The Rabbit Hutch is a strange, meandering novel that will certainly hit the mark for a niche group of readers. Not all the sub-stories hung together for me, but I admired the ambition of this novel and mostly enjoyed it overall. A highly original and very inventive debut.
Overall reaction:
A big thank you to the publishers for sending me out an early edition of the book and inviting me to take part in the online read-along with Tandem Collective.
“On a hot night in Apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body. She is only 18 years old, but she has spent most of her life wishing for this to happen.” And so we tumble down the rabbit hole, Alice holding our hand along the way.
The ‘Rabbit Hutch’ is a cheap housing block, and we follow the lives of some of the residents, as they intersect, improbably linked by the figure of a deceased actress and a closed down automobile industry. Originally designed to house Zorn workers and christened La Lapinière, it’s now a run-down complex that no one ever really refers to as anything other than the Rabbit Hutch. The walls there “are so thin, you can hear everyone’s lives progress like radio plays.”
We see every person’s dark, soft, and vulnerable parts; the things they keep hidden from everyone—perhaps even themselves. This sense of eerie omnipresence permeates the entire book, often flinging us from scenes in the Rabbit Hutch to other parallel storylines.
What happens next is the gradual, chronology-hopping revelation of who Blandine is, what the mystics have to do with anything, how a glowing middle-aged male got himself involved in all this, and why so many human lives (and one goat) have converged on this one horrible moment.
The story’s main focus lies on Blandine, a former foster child who is obsessed with ancient martyrs and mystics and - until recently - was a gifted high school student by another name. Now she works at a local diner and shares a shabby apartment with three other aged-out foster children, all troubled varieties of teenage boy.
This started off so well. I was immediately intrigued by Blandine, I loved the initial world-building Gunty was doing and the bizarre cast of characters she was introducing, and I had very high hopes.
The more I read the more this became a truly mixed bag for me. At times I was racing through it and enjoying the oddness of the stories and the characters. At other times I was a little bit uninterested. My main problem with The Rabbit Hutch was that a significant portion of it seemed unnecessary and largely unrelated to the larger plot. Very few of the many perspectives are essential to the main story being told.
Gunty's writing style is extremely interesting, and the novel certainly ends with a bang, but I struggled to become fully invested through the middle portion of the book. Perhaps the main reason I didn’t enjoy this one as much as i wanted to was that I wish it focused more on Blandine. I was really captivated by her story and found myself sighing every time the next chapter would focus on a different character, some of whom just didn’t relate to the main plot.
The Rabbit Hutch is a strange, meandering novel that will certainly hit the mark for a niche group of readers. Not all the sub-stories hung together for me, but I admired the ambition of this novel and mostly enjoyed it overall. A highly original and very inventive debut.
Overall reaction: