The Rabbit Hutch: A Novel (National Book Award Winner)

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Yes, I was an almost freakishly devout child. The kind of Catholicism that my mother practises is a very supernatural, signs and wonders kind, and her approach to religion was for me inseparable from my belief in magic and fairies and Santa, so it made the world feel much more exciting. There was always this bridge that you could cross into another realm. Politicians seem to treat the midwest as home to only one kind of voter with pain and rage Harris, Elizabeth A. (October 4, 2022). "Here Are This Year's National Book Award Finalists". The New York Times . Retrieved November 17, 2022. Riveting . . . The Rabbit Hutch balances the banal and the ecstatic in a way that made me think of prime David Foster Wallace. It’s a story of love, told without sentimentality; a story of cruelty, told without gratuitousness. Gunty is a captivating writer.” —Sarah Ditum, The Guardian

You were raised in South Bend, Indiana. To what extent were you thinking of South Bend while you were writing about—and building the world of—Vacca Vale? Blandine, whose story is central to the novel, desperately wants to exit her body. What exactly does that mean to her?The Rabbit Hutch is a 2022 debut novel by writer Tess Gunty and winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction. [1] Gunty won the inaugural Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize [2] and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize for the novel. [3] [4] [5] Writing and development [ edit ] Greenblatt, Leah (August 2, 2022). "One Apartment Building, Many Lives". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved October 30, 2022.

Later, when Freeman went on to read “The Rabbit Hutch” and eventually become its editor, he was “dazzled” by Gunty’s range of voices and her “ability to write on the spirit level while also writing about urban decay. ... I think it’s unusual, to put it mildly, that a book with such dazzling architecture and depth of spiritual insight should come at the very beginning of a writer’s life, so I can only imagine what’s going to come next for her. It fills me with a great anticipatory happiness.” A] bizarre, enticing story . . . Addictive . . . This is a novel for both the hopeless and hopeful, and though Gunty does not spare us from the violence of humanity, she understands that it does not define us exclusively. As a writer, Gunty is both deft and versatile. Though she may be unknown to most of her readers, The Rabbit Hutchalready feels like something only Tess Gunty could write.” —Mara Sandroff, Newcity Lit It's a character-driven novel centered around people whose lives are every bit as broken and desperate as the fictional city in Indiana in which it is set. Most of the characters aren't very likable and yet you can't help but like them, or at least be allured by them, by their thoughts and insecurities, dreams and hopelessness. all taking place in a fictional town — in a run-down complex in Vacca Vale, Indiana…..where we contemplate the meaning of life. A poetry collection called Factory Girls by Takako Arai. She’s Japanese and grew up in a silk-weaving factory. It’s about the brutality of industrialism and it’s breathtaking.The Rabbit Hutch aches, bleeds, and even scars but it also forgives with laughter, with insight, and finally, through an act of generational independence that remains this novel’s greatest accomplishment, with an act of rescue, rescue of narrative, rescue from ritual, rescue of heart, the rescue of tomorrow.” —Mark Z. Danielewski, author of House of Leaves No no no, Tess Gunty is NOT the new David Foster Wallace, and the whole comparison makes no sense, and why do the ads even claim that, and why does a young female writer have to be compared to a dead male one if she decides to write over-the-top fiction, as if she needs to have her whole operation legitimized by some dead dude? (I love DFW, but please, make the nonsense stop). The title-giving "Rabbit Hutch" is a crumbling housing complex in Vacca Vale, a fictional town in Indiana. The Rust Belt dwellings inhabit the typical problems one expects, like poverty, unemployment, and a general air of resignation. As the text jumps from one inhabitant to the next, we learn how different tenants live in these surroundings, while the shadowy equivalent of a protagonist is 18-year-old Blandine, a young woman who, in sentence numero uno, exits her body - you're asking what that even means? This questions drives the story. If we drove through Vacca Vale, Indiana—the fictional town where The Rabbit Hutch takes place—what would we see? Set in the fictional Midwestern town of Vacca Vale, Indiana, The Rabbit Hutch revolves around the residents of a run-down apartment building, once ambitiously bestowed the French name, La Lapinière Affordable Housing Complex, by the philanthropist who funded its development. But now after the Zorn Automobile factories are long gone, the city is one of boarded storefronts and abandoned buildings- one of the many “dying cities” in America, the apartment building is more commonly referred to by its English translation “The Rabbit Hutch”. And then there were the stories people told me about growing up in South Bend, which were very present to me as I wrote. My father grew up outside Chicago and my mother’s family settled in Northern California, so I learned about the history of my town through other people. Throughout high school, I worked at a bread bakery, and every weekend I operated its stand at the local Farmer’s Market. There, people would stop at my booth and tell me the stories of their lives, sometimes for hours; I was honored and surprised by their trust. The voices of these people—most of whom were elderly, left behind by family and friends, failed by structures that were only beginning to become visible to me—took up residence in my mind and never left, expanding my understanding of our collective home, the infinite lives available there, the patterns detectable among them.

Price, Emily (August 15, 2022). "The Rabbit Hutch Is a Frenetic Debut About Alienation". Paste Magazine . Retrieved November 17, 2022. In The Rabbit Hutch, Gunty writes with a keen, sensitive eye about all manner of intimacies—the kind we build with other people, and the kind we cultivate around ourselves and our tenuous, private aspirations.” —Raven Leilani, author of Luster Blandine, who is obsessed with martyred saints, is the heroine Gunty always wanted to see — not just as a child, but now, as an adult. the fictional characters are unique —grumpy- obsessed -pessimistic - vulnerable - violent- extreme- flawed -lonely - isolated - powerful - powerless …..deeply struggling - An online obituary writer. A young mother with a dark secret. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents— neighbors, separated only by the thin walls of a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial center of Vacca Vale, Indiana.That’s even more the case when you’re a woman, with the kind of body that’s made to be occupied. A pregnant woman imagines herself as a building and the foetus inside her as a developer: “Room by room, he demolished her body and rebuilt it into his own.” Blandine rails against the female condition: “Her body contains goods and services, and people will try to extract those goods and services without her permission.” Of course she dreams of making her escape. Again, this review really pains me - there are definitely glimmers of something special in Gunty's writing, hence the generous rounding up of my rating, but it ended up being a very big miss in the end. That being said, I would definitely read another book from her in the future - Google tells me she signed a two-book deal, so I'm sure I'll get that chance. Hildegard is the first thinker that Blandine has encountered who personifies her highest aspirations: Hildegard possesses an omnivorous curiosity, a polyphonous identity, an ecstatic devotion to nature, access to the supernatural, and a radiant spiritual energy that can withstand systemic abuse and physical illness. In Hildegard’s life and work, Blandine glimpses her most intimate values operating at high volume in another person.