Description

DARKLY HILARIOUS AND SEARINGLY RELEVANT, THE RABBIT HUTCH IS A POWERFUL PORTRAIT OF 21st CENTURY AMERICA, SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF THE UNFORGETTABLE BLANDINE

Winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2022 * Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction 2022

‘Inventive, heartbreaking and acutely funny’ Observer

Vacca Vale, Indiana: recently voted number 1 on Newsweek’s list of dying American cities. According to the developers, however, it’s a city with a whole history of reinvention, one that ‘buzzes with the American spirit.’

Not everyone agrees though – certainly not the residents of the Rabbit Hutch, a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial centre, populated by a cast of unforgettable, disenfranchised characters. There’s an online obituary writer, a woman waging a solo campaign against rodents and, most notably, eighteen-year-old Blandine, recently released from foster care and determined to stop the developers whatever the cost.

Set over one sweltering week in July, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America. Bold, experimental and brilliantly written, it will live in the memory long after the final page.

A Waterstones Book of the Year for 2022

‘The Rabbit Hutch is 2022’s The Secret History’ The Big Issue

A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award * Winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize * An Oprah Daily Book of the Year, 2022

A New York Times bestseller, Sept 3 2023

Publisher Review

'A firecracker debut. Seriously impressive... The writing is incandescent, the range of styles and voices remarkable... There's so much dazzling stuff here.' -- The Sunday Times 'Inventive, heartbreaking and acutely funny.' -- Observer 'Here is something new, a first novel with the wisdom and tenderness of a masterwork; an unflinching look at the down-and-outs that continue to rise and rise. The Rabbit Hutch is addictive, mesmerizing and unforgettable.' -- Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf 'Original and incisive... Breathtaking, compassionate and spectacular.' -- The Irish Times 'Throughout, tension is mixed with hilarity, heartbreak with hope. It all makes for a gripping, memorable debut full of peculiar wonders.' -- Mail on Sunday 'Philosophical, and earthy, and tender and also simply very fun to read.' -- Rivka Galchen, author of Little Labours 'Gunty writes with a keen, sensitive eye about all manner of intimacies.' -- Raven Leilani, author of Luster 'Just when everything seemed designed for a brief moment of utility before its planned obsolescence, here comes The Rabbit Hutch, a profoundly wise, wildly inventive, deeply moving work of art whose seemingly infinite offerings will remain with you long after you finish it. Each page of this novel contains a novel, a world.' -- Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything is Illuminated '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.' -- Guardian 'Author Tess Gunty has the scope and acuity of David Foster Wallace, without the obscurantism and wilfully slow pace... Brilliant.' -- Financial Times, The Best Debut Fiction round-up