Reviews with content warning for Mental illness - The Rabbit Hutch

Wow. This was fantastic. A beautiful story of how you can feel so alone in the world, and have no idea that every person around you deals with similar feelings and emotions and traumas. How your neighbors are strangers, but live lives that aren’t so far from your own. A “coming of age” story of people who even in their 60’s don’t feel they have it all figured out yet. A story of people just trying to live, and love, and hate, and find peace in turmoil, trying to find where they fit in the world without becoming a part of things they despise. It’s beautifully written, quirky, poetic, deep, raw, and true. I loved this a thousand times more than I thought I would. Absolutely wonderful.

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cstein's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

In this ambitious and then painfully pointed examination of contemporary struggle, Gunty employs a unique narrative style and extensive knowledge of her spiritual and philosophical forebears to great effect. The late, Dostoevsky-esque monologue chapter was the novel's highlight and a pleasure to parse through. Gunty has a keen eye for phenomena one passively observes but never articulates. However, when it finally arrived, the scene anticipated from page one felt underexamined.

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lucyatoz's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Blandine isn't like the other residents of her building. Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch.

Well, that was a reading experience I was not expecting at all! The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty is a gut retching novel, with an online obituary writer, an old couple who have a rodent problem, a young mother with a secret and four teenagers who have aged out of state foster care, living as neighbours in a run down, lost cost apartment block. The story is set over the space of a week and accumulates with a violent stabbing.

I appreciated how the narrative was written and how the story elicited strong emotions as I read it, however I felt that it did not flow exactly and sometimes the plot lacked focus.

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gardens_and_dragons's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Really love the premise, the purple prose, and the mystery of the apartment complex’s inhabitants. I wish that the plot was a bit more fleshed out for some of it.

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