Rabbit Cake
by Annie Hartnett
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Pub Date Mar 07 2017 | Archive Date Feb 28 2017
Description
A Note From the Publisher
An American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Pick.
LibraryReads nominations due by 1/20/17.
An American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Pick.
Advance Praise
"In Hartnett’s winning debut, a memorable young narrator’s desire for rationality wrestles with her grief. Elvis’s mother once marked every milestone by baking a rabbit-shaped cake, but the year Elvis turns 10, without any fanfare, mom sleepwalks into the river and drowns.... Like many novels with child narrators, Hartnett’s quirky, Southern-tinged debut relies heavily on Elvis’s relative naïveté for dramatic irony. Matter-of-fact Elvis, however, is no mere victim. Her relationship with animals, in particular, rings true—she volunteers at the local zoo—and her story is affecting, exploring how a fragile but precocious girl strives to define herself after a tragedy." - Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"a brilliant book...the narrator's voice is a stunning combination of youthful and astute." - Kirkus, Starred Review
“Annie Hartnett's Rabbit Cake is fantastically original, a story about loss that expands in such exciting, unpredictable ways that I found myself completely won over by the unique Babbitt clan. Hartnett has such a gift for absurdity without ever losing the essential heart of the story. With this novel, she's become one of my favorite writers.” - Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of The Family Fang
“Heartbreak and dark comedy fuse together in this endearing story of family dysfunction and loss. I cheered for young Elvis Babbitt and the entire cast of quirky characters as they stumbled along a twisted path toward healing.” - Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and Looking for Me
Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9781941040560 |
PRICE | $15.95 (USD) |
PAGES | 287 |
Featured Reviews
With echoes of Kevin Wilson's The Family Fang and Karen Russell's Swamplandia, Annie Hartnett introduces us to the Babbett family who has just lost their mother to an accidental drowning while she was sleepwalking. This quirky, always off-kilter family is having more trouble than usual getting their balance since her death. Fifth grader Elvis narrates this tale about her clueless father, troublemaking sister, Lizzie and a cast of characters (and animals) that float into their lives as they try to grieve their loss.
I loved this book. The first sentence has me hooked, "On my 10th birthday, six months before she sleepwalked into the river , Mom burned the rabbit cake".Elvis, her older sister Lizzie, and her father are ill equipped to deal with the death of her mother. Elvis is pretty much left on her own to navigate through her grief, while still having to take care of her sleepwalking, trouble causing sister, and her father who has turned inward is no help. The character Elvis is written brilliantly, and I loved her thought process, and what she had to say. While smart beyond her years, she is trying trouble trying to understand the how and why of her mothers death, discovering secrets along the way she'd rather not know. Elvis is a character I will not forget anytime soon. Smart, ,honest and uplifting. I highly recommend Rabbit Cake.
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