Rabbit Moon

I loved this novel. It has everything I want in a book - drama, great characterization, compelling narrative, and a riveting plot.

Lindsey Litvak, who her parents think is in Beijing China, teaching English as a Second Language, is actually in Shanghai. When Lindsey gets hit by a hit-and-run driver in the middle of the night, her life hangs by a thread in a Chinese hospital. She is in a coma, kept alive by tubes and force of will, Her divorced parents, Claire and Aaron, puzzled about Lindsey being in Shanghai, fly there immediately to be with their injured daughter. They have no idea what she is doing in Shanghai or why and when she left Beijing.

Grace is Lindsey's younger adopted sister with whom she's always been very close. Ethnically Chinese, Grace was adopted in China and has been raised in the United States by the Litvak family since infancy. She and Lindsey usually text regularly and, when Lindsey no longer answers Grace's texts, she becomes worried. Grace is in a Quaker sleep-away camp and is left in the dark about the severity of Lindsay's accident.

Lindsey is not teaching English. In fact, she is doing nothing like that. She is involved in something that she has not told her parents about because it is shady. She has one good friend, a gay hair stylist, and he does his best to avoid Lindsey's parents when they arrive in Shanghai.

I found this novel almost impossible to set down. Grace's denouement moved me to tears. I highly recommend Rabbit Moon to anyone who loves compelling literary fiction. Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for granting me early access to Ms. Haigh's wonderful novel.

I have loved Jennifer Haigh’s novels since I read her first. This novel was no disappointment. In fact, I suspect it will (should) be on the BEST BOOKS of 2025 lists. It is the story of a young woman whose life was turned upside down by her fragility and the predator next door.

Lyndsey escapes the unhappiness and dissatisfaction with her life by escaping to China, theoretically to teach English. There she becomes the target of a very different predator and becomes enmeshed in the horrors of the underbelly of Shanghai.

Her parents, newly divorced, are called to China after a horrific accident puts Lindsay in a comatose state in a strange Shanghai hospital.

The ray of sunshine is provided by Lyndsey’s adopted sister Grace, brought from China as an infant. They have enjoyed a close and loving relationship. It is Grace who tells much of the story, including the closure that readers (especially me) crave after reading a book of this power with such sympathetic characters.

I really loved this book. I highly recommend it to book groups, so much to discuss. I think it is extremely timely vis-à-vis our current interest in China. Haughty approaches the eternal mother-daughter struggle with empathy.

Thank you Netgalley for the privilege of reading this extraordinary novel.