The Rabbit Hutch by  Tess Gunty

The Rabbit Hutch

Tess Gunty

The Rabbit Hutch is the tower-block in which the characters of this novel reside: living in close proximity yet at a distance from one another. There is mundanity, the extraordinary and trauma in the lives depicted, which all converge in a single moment, the moment the novel starts, when the main character 'exits her body'. Shocking from the start, this is a provoking, tumultuous read. It will make you think, laugh and despair in equal measure.

Extract

But the most enraging aspect of all the aspects is the situation's banality. Blandine is thereafter cursed with the knowledge that one of the defining events of her life was nothing more than a solution to a tired equation. The internet pummels her with proof: an actor sleeps with his nanny; the head of the International Equestrian Games has fucked at least sixteen participants; yet another intern blows yet another president; a philosophy professor proposes to an advisee who was born when he was fifty. One nation flashes its nuclear weapons at another. Most of the world's debt belongs to one guy. Rich countries are fucking up the weather in poor countries. In a nature documentary, a low-ranking chimpanzee rises to power by wreaking havoc in his community for a week, until the other males begin to submissively groom him, In the Valley, Blandine overhears three preteen girls tell a fourth preteen girl that she smells like socks. The redevelopment will begin its renovation of Zorn Automobile factories this summer, and demolition of the Valley will begin after that. At Vaca Vale Zoo, the male polar bear eats one of his cubs while the mother looks on, too depressed to intervene. The moment Blandine felt most alive, she was nothing but a variable. 

Parallels
  • NW by Zadie Smith
  • Nobody is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
  • Roger and Me - the film
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Violence
Explicit sexual Content