This book is luminous, the prose is fantastic, and the story necessary. it is very giftable to anyone who likes beautiful literature with cultural importance

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

I just finished this book and I truly still don't know what it was about. Unfortunately it was very jumbled for me and it was hard to see what the author was trying to do. It felt more like a series of short stories that didn't have a beginning or end? I do not recommend.

Even though I would generally say I focus more on character driven stories and want to be entranced by the writing, this is one of those times I must confess that I am a simple person who wants a story arc and for the plot to move things along.

The setting is a bleak and some of the characters lives are even bleaker, if this is your jam, have at it.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via Net Galley.

I would ultimately describe this book as perplexing. I enjoyed reading it, but afterwards I found myself wondering what was the point, or whether I had missed something. I liked Gunty’s inventiveness with language and how unafraid the book was to be unabashedly weird, but ultimately it just didn’t 100% come together for me.

A lot of characters, none of whom I was interested in reading about. A very loose story that was also uninteresting for the most part. A writing style that felt like it was trying to be clever and experimental and just came off as amateurish and unengaging. Lots of chapters that didn't go anywhere or add anything. Bloated, vague storytelling - not for me.

Finally read this for the paperback, and holy god, this is a BRILLIANT book. everything ever said about this novel is true. It owns my heart.

The description “A tale of loneliness and community, entrapment and freedom” initially drew my interest to this book. The set up of this novel is incredibly intricate as the reader is introduced to a wide cast of characters whose convergence has cohesion but also feels random. There are a lot of thought provoking scenarios and the characters have good self awareness, but I kept asking myself, what exactly is the plot? And, do I really finish this novel? There were times I was just not interested to proceed, but, I did, I just hope the few rather jarring graphic descriptions leave my brain.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

Thank you so much to the publisher for sending me an ARC!
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Unfortunately I DNFed this, it just didn’t catch my attention and maybe I’ll get into it again when Imm in the perfect headspace to give this another try!

The Rabbit Hutch has been mentioned on so many lists that I had to give it a read. The... quirky (shall we say?) characters from the apartment complex make up the narrative, and it's a story like no other. I liked the character of Blandine, but the story jumped around so it felt broken up.

This book is not for everyone and it just wasn't my cup of tea.

I reviewed this book on my Booktube channel several times. Here are the links:
https://studio.youtube.com/video/IwY6CfIrnpU/edit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpb-FDDMM1g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFUkAj-81Hs&t=13s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFUkAj-81Hs&t=13s

This was an interesting story but there were too many characters to follow along with. I love books with interconnecting stories but some just didn’t seem to fit with everything else happening. There were a couple that I wanted a little bit more of.

While this author has potential, the writing "ticks" were quickly recognizable and often repeated. Candidly, they are all I remember about this book.

I did not enjoy this book. The story was disturbing. The main character was not likeable. The 3 male characters were not likeable, in fact, it was hard to tell them apart.
I kept reading because I thought it might get better. It did not.

This was an interesting read about Blandine, who has gone through a series of events, shaping her into the person she is today. This story is a blend of people inhabiting an complex called The Rabbit Hutch. The story follows Blandine, her roommates, and her neighbors.

I think the story is impactful in a way of how one reacts to the situations come across in life and how people move, or don't move, on.

THE RABBIT HUTCH opens with a tragic, violent event, then tracks backwards, tracing the lives of the people who live in the low-cost housing complex known as The Rabbit Hutch.

We get glimpses into the lives of, among others, a depressed overwhelmed postpartum mother who has developed a fear of her baby’s eyes, a lonely 50-something woman whose job is to purge negative posts from an online memorial site, four teenagers who have just aged out of state foster care, and a recently-deceased TV star and her alienated son.

The novel depends on character depth and texture–and on the layered effect of different characters’ stories. So, it’s fortunate that even when the characters are types, none of them are clichés. They easily come alive with individual quirks, complex interior monologues, histories, and hopes. Blandine, the young woman who “leaves her body” at the beginning of the novel, is a near-genius obsessed with Catholic female mystics, deeply traumatized by an emotionally intense affair with a high school teacher, and a secret saboteur of a local development project.

The novel starts off slowly, cutting between different characters’ perspectives and different genres of text. Interior stream of consciousness gives way to a traditional scene and dialogue between two characters, followed by a newspaper clip, a close third-person perspective, a dead celebrity’s parting letter to the public, a first-person plural narrative from the perpetrators of violence, and more. While the overall effect is confusing and disorienting at first, each section does in fact connect to the previous one through a mention or reference. The writing is textured and interesting enough to keep me reading, but it’s definitely a format for people who appreciate more literary writing–and may be difficult going for anyone wanting a traditional plot or point of view.

For me, the writing was interesting enough to keep me reading but didn’t grab me until we began to see the main character Blandine’s building affair with her high school teacher. At that point, the emotional intensity brought me deep into the book and kept me there.

From that point, the interwoven sections built to a complex, unexpected ending–which managed to feel at once surprising, tragic, and inevitable. And despite the dark and difficult events, the novel contains depths of hope and true character change, with its violent outcome leavened by loving, empathetic, or caring actions from characters or situations I had written off.

THE RABBIT HUTCH is a textured, multilayered narrative that manages to be both cerebral, heart-filled, and plotty. For literary readers–or those who can hold on until the narrative takes off–it’s well worth the read.

The only way I can describe this book is to call it weird and lovely. And sad. But only if you agree that sad isn't necessarily a bad thing. The residents of a low-cost housing complex called the Rabbit Hutch, mainly a quartet of former foster children, learn the ways of the world.

I don't think I am in my best mindset for this book at the moment, and I don’t want to force myself to continue.

It is BEAUTIFULLY written, and the intrigue is high. There has just been a few depressing and disturbing scenes in the first few chapters that I couldn't continue at this time.

Find the trigger warnings on Storygraph and if you can handle them, the book itself seems wonderful as far as I had gotten.

The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty's debut novel, is certainly the literary book-of-the-moment, winning the National Book Award and laudatory reviews everywhere. Set largely in a decaying low-income apartment building in the fictional Indiana city of Vacca Vale, the novel follows a few residents and others, but focuses on Blandine, a teenager who shares an apartment with three boys, all of whom are, like her, graduates from the foster system. Blandine is brilliant and oddly charismatic and beautiful in an off-beat way. She loves mystics, especially medieval women, and likes to rant in what sounds like lengthy twitter threads. Everyone is drawn to her, from her high school drama teacher to the three boys who live in the same apartment, to a middle-aged woman who speaks to her once. Gunty has a writing style that sometimes feels over-written and witty for the sake of being witty, but which flows nicely and she does have an eye for the interesting detail.

I struggled with this novel, I really did. I loved the sections that weren't about or told from the perspective of Blandine, which is to say, there were a handful of chapters I enjoyed. But Blandine is the focus of the novel and of the people in this novel. She's beautiful and brilliant, and quirky and unique, and everyone thinks about her all the time. I like novels with unlikeable protagonists and I like books with likable main characters, but here is an unlikeable character whom everyone genuflects to and thinks about all the time. Random people notice how beautiful she is as she passes them on the street. I was bored with her and a little baffled that being told over and over that this character is fascinating is enough for many readers to decide that yes, she is. Anyway, greater minds than mine loved this book.