This is so unlike anything I've ever read. It's a whole new thing. I'm kind of speechless. How brilliantly and beautifully written. This book didn't even need a plot. I was hooked from the first page, but I went through this slowly because I didn't ever want to leave Tess Gunty's voice behind. What a special thing this is.

Something I especially enjoyed is how it handled the burden of being...well, special. How it's not all it's cracked up to be. How tortured genius backfires, and not just through lifelong mental illness.

How clever and weird. I love it.

While I felt this book started off well, with a quirky set of characters and the insular setting of a shared apartment building, my interest and my patience ran out pretty quickly with so many digressions and extraneous characters who did nothing to enhance the main plot. Gunty, clearly, can wield some pretty sparkling prose, but in this story, we were treated to way too many themes, and plot elements which felt more cliched than interesting. A novel about loneliness and family, mental health, and certainly vulnerability, will have its share of depressed and angry characters, but these characters all felt too similar, too hyper-aware of their own self-loathing. It all became pretty predictable, and the story degenerated from quirky into trying too hard to be unique. That being said, Tess Gunty has got my attention, and I am looking forward to seeing what she does next.

I only read about 25% and that was more than enough for me. It seemed like one long paragraph and that drives me crazy.
It seemed like a bunch of people lived in a building and had no lives to speak of, but took forever to tell about them. Nope, not for me.
Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest opinion.

Inventive, strange, beautiful. A really daring new voice that reminds of the new sincerity movement. I was really hooked by the playfulness of the voice. And for once, an ensemble cast seemed to work seamlessly!

I decided to read this book purely for the praise and award season buzz, without any idea of the plot. I'm so pleased that I went in without any opinions formed, because I was able to just experience the book. In this spirit, I'll avoid describing the plot here, and instead I'll just say that I found this novel so compelling and will be thinking about it for a long time. I loved the way we cut between scenes, locations, people, and their apartments. The overlapping stories all connected somehow, but there was no neat wrap-up at the end, like there often is in books with parallel plot lines. I adored the character of Blandine and rooted for her so hard.

CW: Animal cruelty. I didn't expect animal cruelty to be part of this book, and I was already very invested when it came up, so I just skipped parts I felt nervous about. I got the gist and skipping bits didn't take away from the story, but I totally understand if this deters some readers from giving this one a go.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-galley.

For more reviews and bookish posts please visit: https://www.ManOfLaBook.com

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty is a novel about residents of low-income housing in a fictional Indiana town. This is Ms. Gunty’s debut novel.

The story takes place in the low-income apartment building known as The Rabbit Hutch to its residents and La Lapinière Affordable Housing Complex in Vacca Vale, Indiana. It is on a hot night, in Apartment C4, when 18-year-old Blandine Watkins exits her body, almost in the same way her name sake, Saint Blandine, did 2,000 years ago.

Blandine had a difficult life, and she lives with three other post-foster teenagers in The Rabbit Hutch. We work our way through the 48 hours of the revelation of how Blandine exits her body, and the people around her living in a dying town.

The novel is off to a slow start, but I found it full of symbolism. Starting, of course, at apartment C4, where people are cramped like rabbits, to the teen who named herself Blandine, after a Christian Saint protected by wild beasts.

While Blandine tries to find order, The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty culminates in a scene of bloody chaos (and a wild beast to boot). Reading a bit about Saint Blandine (Blandina), helped me understand the correlation between our literary protagonist and the parallels the author drew.

The fictional town of Vacca Vale, Indiana comes to life better than expected. It is a run-down town, way past its glory days when the Zorn automobile company thrived. Today, like many towns of America’s heartlands, the town had degraded with its people into absurdity, along with members of the Zorn family, living on past glories.

The apartment complex is full of characters that would seem familiar to anyone who lived in one. Bickering couples, the lonely ones who resent the opposite sex, young mothers, babies and children – all living too close for comfort.

Symbolism aside, which you don’t have to understand to enjoy the story, the narrative is full of ideas. Each one of those ideas would make an excellent story, but all together they feel unbalanced. The story digresses from the main narrative, and then nudges the reader back in, only to digress again. Done a few times, and the way Ms. Gunty wrote it, that’s a winning formula. However, I felt that in this instance, this mechanism was done too much. Nevertheless, this is a well-written novel, thoughtful, and quite smart as well.

Writing: 5/5 Characters: 5/5 Plot: 3.5/5

A low-cost housing complex (The Rabbit Hutch) in a dying small town in Indiana, a set of disconnected neighbors, and a build up to a freakish act of violence that somehow weaves them together. It’s a bizarre and convoluted story that races from humor to creepy and back again without a second thought, culminating in an act that brings all the loose strands together. The writing is stunning (see the quotes below), the wildly diverse characters rendered in full technicolor detail with ongoing and minutely documented social commentary attached to individual observations. The characters: a lonely online obituary moderator, a young mother with dark thoughts, a 70ish couple decidedly not keeping up with the times, and a group of four teenagers who have aged out of the foster care system, including Blandine who is seeking meaning in the writings of the mystics — Hildegard von Bingen from the 12th century in particular.

It’s brilliantly done, bringing psychology, philosophy, and reflection to bear on the ways all of these people trying to make sense of their own lives. The author has a pointed ability to see into the motivations, experiences, and fears of those who appear rather anonymous on the outside. From the mystics to sexual grooming to isolation to the environment to the effects of noise pollution (my favorite) — the book was intellectually interesting and humorous in places, but — I admit — overall had a doomed, hopeless feel. I made it a “daytime only” read. However, I did not find the end depressing — I think that is important to note, and I wish I had known that ahead of time!

New words (for me):
Misophonia — People with misophonia are affected emotionally by common sounds — usually those made by others and usually ones that other people don't pay attention to. The examples above (breathing, yawning, or chewing) create a fight-or-flight response that triggers anger and a desire to escape.
Balayage: a technique for highlighting hair in which the dye is painted on in such a way as to create a graduated, natural-looking effect.

A few quotes, but there are a million more…

“Joan apologized three more times, then returned to her seat, feeling evil. As usual, when she confronted the world about one of its problems, the world suggested that the problem was Joan.”

“…the cackles and squawks of three tween girls overthrow the words on the page, infuriating her. They sound like chimpanzees. Just when Joan thinks the tween cackling will stop, it gets louder, engulfing her flammable peace along with the compartment.”

“Tiffany is insecure, cerebral, and enraged. Pretty in an extraterrestrial sort of way. Addicted to learning because it distracts her from the hostility of her consciousness; she has one of those brains that attacks itself unless it’s completing a difficult task.”

“She did bring a book, but she wasn’t reading it, just bullying the ink into sense.”

“And then on top of that — weaponzing a person’s isolation — it convinced every user that she is a minor celebrity, forcing her to curate some sparkly and artificial sampling of her best experiences, demanding a nonstop social performance that has little in common with her inner life, intensifying her narcissism, multiplying her anxieties, narrowing her worldview.”

“It’s moments like these when Joan fears she is a subject in some elaborate, federally funded psychology experiement.”

“She feels like a demanding and ill-fated houseplant, one that needs light in every season but will die in direct sun, one whose soil requires daily water but will drown if it receives too much, one that takes a fertilizer only sold at a store that’s open three hours a day, one that …

“They are elite, climate controlled, dentally supreme.”

“Frequently, Hope wondered what it would be like to vacation in her cousin’s psychology.”

“She always knew that she was too small and stupid to lead a revolution, but she had hoped she could at least imagine one.”

This book RIPS. The word I keep coming back to to describe this novel is “lush”- in its philosophical and structural complexity, its depth of emotion, its inherent strangeness and indulgence in its ideas. The Rabbit Hutch centers around post-industrialism, toxic masculinity, and mysticism. Through these anchors, the novel questions the possibility of transcendence: of corporeality, a moment of violence, politics, climate change, poverty, a traumatic past. Through its polyphonic telling, the novel pushes against the bounds of its own form, lending a sense of unpredictability and intelligence on every page. I love how this book plays with realism, particularly in its characterization of Blandine, the ethereal protagonist recently aged out of the foster care system who seeks structure in her life through the writings of Catholic female mystics, while living with three increasingly violent teenage boys. This blend of hyper-specificity in Blandine’s story, contrasted with the fleeting voices of others within Vacca Vale, the fictional Midwestern town which serves as a character in itself, reminded me of two favorites: Middlemarch and Jonathan Franzen. This debut is so assured in its telling - I am so glad to see it on this year’s National Book Award longlist. Also, Tess narrates most of the audiobook with an excellent performance! Don’t miss it.

Thanks to NetGalley for the arc

The novel starts out by telling you that Blandine will exit her body. It’s a fantastic opening, intriguing the reader with ambiguity and anticipation. Gunty cannot be faulted for her tension building at the beginning of the novel nor can she be faulted for her prose which is witty and insightful. For this reason alone, this book is worth a read. Beyond that, the narrative is a bit out-there, scattering and gathering strands of different threads, creating a textured and layered novel (and, yes, there are pictures). The writing and the narrative combined together make for something pretty original and the piece stands out from a lot of other books - it is unsurprising that this debut novel is already winning prizes. Gunty also has an exceptional way of capturing the ordinary and hitting you hard with sentences that can completely change your perspective.

That being said, Blandine walks the line between being a highly interesting character and a manic pixie dream girl. At a few points we see her façade break and the suggestion of a human underneath, but ultimately she is the character we see over and over in “depressed women” literature, just with a passion for Hildegard. And whilst I enjoyed the novel, there was also something a little lacking, maybe that the narratives in the novel are a little unbalanced, that the structure and form needed a little tending to.

This is definitely not for everyone - if you like books that start at the beginning and end at the end with a really strong plot, this may not be for you. But, if you are looking for something strange, something a bit different, I’d highly recommend you give this one a try.

This book was melancholy, quirky, unique and kind of all over the place. I went in really wanting to love it and I just felt bogged down by the amount of characters and sub plots.

I had such high hopes for this one and while the writing was beautiful and extremely well done I just struggled to connect with the story and dang it ... it was just such a downer. Maybe it was the wrong time for me, but I just couldn't get into it. 3 stars for the quality of writing.

Like I wasn't going to read this book with THAT cover? And somehow I magically read every book with "bunny" or "rabbit" in the title...?

Heads up: Animal violence

Blandine is living with three other teenagers who have just aged out of the foster care system in the old apartment complex known as the Rabbit Hutch. This book guides us through Blandine's past and present life, showing us who she is and what she's been through. Currently she seems to be obsessed with saints and martyrs and finds herself wanting to escape her body much like they did. In a town that's hopelessly run-down by their former thriving car industry, it's no wonder she wants to leave through any way possible.

The book culminates in bloody chaos, almost a sacrificial baptism of this city that's ready to rebuild itself at the expense of the less privileged.

This is a beautiful and lonely little book. You can feel the melancholy tension throughout this book of a person and town, both teetering on the edge of failure or success. That first chapter alone was pure reading euphoria for me. It was especially poignant going back to re-read it once I had finished the whole book.

There were definitely some times that I lost the storyline while reading, only to find the connections later. It's worth it to push through the parts that don't seem as relevant.

Is this book weird? Of course. But I love 'em weird. If you do too, pick this one up.

I think the concept and the vibe of this book are really cool. It looks at more of a darker view of teenagers and the foster care system. I think if you're looking for a darker and a little bit weird I have a book this is definitely a great option for you.

Incredibly impressed with this debut! Gunty masterfully weaves together many VERY bizarre plotlines in a way that I literally couldn't put down and left me breathless. An incredibly interesting and fresh novel.

2.5 rounded up

Ugh, remind me not to form views on books based on overly promising opening chapters!

This "fiercely original"* novel is getting a lot of press in the UK after winning the inaugural Waterstones debut fiction prize. The novel follows a handful of residents of La Lapinière Affordable Housing Complex - known by its residents by the English translation of the name, The Rabbit Hutch. The character who we spend most of our time following is Blandine, an 18 year old high-school dropout.

I'm finding it a little difficult to describe the plot without giving away spoilers, but the story (and characters) is kind of offbeat and strange... just not in a way that makes it particularly interesting and felt like it was covering up for a lack of substance. It's hard to explain. I had a few issues with the book overall: As my GR friend Jennifer has said, Blandine is *the* ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl; almost unbearably so. She feels like some kind of cipher through which the story is told and very much like a character in a story as opposed to a real person. I did not get the point of the Moses plot at all either, and Bladine's housemates and their story line held no interest for me.

So why three stars? Despite all over the above I found this novel hard to put down. There were some great lines (when the writing didn't feel too self-conscious) and the Tiffany/James story line was well done. I loved Joy's character too and wish there were more of her chapters.

Gunty's writing and storytelling holds great promise, and I'll definitely check her next book out despite my misgivings about her debut.

* The words of Waterstones' head of fiction, Bea Carvalho (not mine)

Well that epigraph sure set the tone.

What I loved:
The beauty of this book is in the details, like the diner that attracts “a disproportionate number of people in berets.” Same with the quirky specificity of each character, like Joan, “who has never confidently traversed a crosswalk in her life and profoundly distrusts people who claim they dislike bread.”

What I didn’t love:
Was there a plot? Maybe that’s a little harsh, I did see the connection between each chapter by the time I was 20% into it and it did start to flow smoothly toward the middle. The descriptions were so rich that I almost didn’t miss having some more action. But the story jumped around more that I would’ve liked - I felt like the scene changed just as I was getting interested in each chapter.

Also, if you’re a mood reader you’ll want to pick this up on a grey day because. The characters are angry, sad, despondent, and the city they live in is a depressing backdrop to it all. It’s beautifully written but for sure a downer.

We hear this a lot about books--this one is unlike other novels, but in many ways, this novel is unlike other novels because it takes place over three days, mainly centering on one character, Tiffany/Blandine, and a few others who live in the same apartment complex. At times, the novel has very funny scenes, then it takes turns to the dark side. It's mainly about four teens who have just left foster care and move into an apartment together. We get introduced to other characters in the novel, but they remain more or less on the peripheral. I rather missed hearing from some of them, especially the neighbor obsessed with her husband putting a dead mouse by a neighbor's door. It's a compelling novel filled with zest and wit.

The Rabbit Hutch is an enjoyable quirky cast of characters book that delves into rural America, identity, and faith (but not in the traditional sense). In the failing city of Vacca Vale, Indiana, residents of the La Lapinière Apartment Complex grapple with questions of who they are, what their life has led up to so far, and where they are going. This book is very ambitious in the breadth of subjects it covers. Urban revitalization is contrasted with studies of ancient mystics and martyrs, relationships of all stages and power dynamics are explored alongside rare mental health conditions. This book interestingly weaves past, present, and future together through the individual perspectives of these characters, as well as incorporating a non-linear storyline.

I don't believe the description of the book that I had going in was accurate. The story is not simply about four teenagers who aged out of the foster care system - in fact, I think it is about them the least (with the exception of Blandine). The three boys seemed flat when compared with Hope, Moses Robert Blitz, and Joan Kowalski. Overall, the book is very smart and has great sentences, however, it fails to keep the suspense building as the reader nears the end. The final discussion between James and Blandine was one of the slowest parts of the book, and I felt it was both unnecessarily complicated and reduced the impact of the climax.

This book is very strange and hard to follow. I like the concept and that is why I requested the galley but ultimately I was not grabbed by the characters or the convoluted storyline. I think that books like this do help build empathy and that is why I will purchase it for our collection but I did not enjoy reading it personally. It seemed to be weird for the sake of being weird and I'm not sure how many readers will connect with the narrator. There was so much hype around this title, especially as a debut, but I do not think that it lived up to that.

blandine wants to exit her body.

and she achieves just that inside the rabbit hutch, an apartment complex where very different people share the small, crowded space. with paper thin walls everyone living in there is aware of each other, there’s C2 where joan kowalski, who’s career consists of monitoring obituary comments online, C6 an old couple who seems to have fallen out of love, C8 where a new woman new to motherhood is deathly afraid of her son’s eyes and finally there’s apartment C4 where four former foster care teenagers live. those teenagers are called blandine, todd, malik and jack and those three boys are her ticket to exiting out of her body.

i loved this weird assemble of characters, loved getting to know them and their quirks, likes and dislikes, theirs fears and wants but ironically this was also what hindered the potencial of the book. tess gunty spends a lot of time with secondary characters and subplots that are in no way related to the blandine and her story, it’s also selective on which characters get a complete backstory or not. for example a 50yr old man who’s the son of a famous actress who died, the obituary overseen by joan kowalski in C2 and idol of the woman in C8, are given an extensive backstory and importance. while the three teenagers who blandine lives with are not, we don’t know much about them or what drives them to do what they do at the end of the novel.

i did get what gunty was trying to say, something about a group of strangers being connected even if it is by a very very very loose string but it feel a bit flat as a casual reader and also gave the novel an air of a collection of short stories instead.

that is not to say that i didn’t enjoy it at all because i did, gunty’s writing was a delight and a sort of saving feature of her debut novel and makes up from the fact that she more than often deviated from the plot.