The residents of The Rabbit Hutch are a diverse cast of characters; a mother secretly afraid of her newborn’s eyes, an elderly couple bent on revenge, an online obituary writer, a trio of former foster children all in love with the same girl. Weaving throughout their stories is Blandine, a strange and luminescent girl obsessed with an ancient martyr and carrying past secrets of her own. Their stories swirl and intersect in unexpected ways both compassionate and violent, painting a beautifully fractured portrait of a low-income residence in a city clawing its way back from economic collapse.
It’s a story somehow quintessentially American yet universal yet deeply personal, told in a way that straddles novel, vignette, short story, and at times even graphic novel. Author Tess Gunty is a brilliant and skillul writer; The Rabbit Hutch won the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction, the inaugural Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize. Surely this book will win your heart as well- it certainly did mine.
-Hannah, Program and Outreach Manager
