I'm really not sure if I'm not "enlightened" enough to get all the fuss over this book or if it's just a puffed piece of marketing. I was not impressed with the writing, the story, and felt that it was a bunch of rambling and tropes crammed together to make a book.

Good writing, beautiful book cover, I did have to DNF due to how slow it was. I think maybe in the future I will try reading it again, but as of now it did not capture my attention.

I wanted to read this book because of all the attention it had received. While I am not sure it completely lives up to the hype (which book does?), it is a good, interesting read depicting (mostly) the young adult lives of kids who grew up in the foster system. There are other characters in the book, who are equally as interesting, but their lives don’t intersect the main character as much so we unfortunately don’t get to know much about them. I could have learned less about the son of the movie star and more about the older neighbor couple. There is a satisfying end, though, that wraps (most of) the neighbors together. I would absolutely recommended this book, but level out your expectations. You don’t find interesting characters like the ones in this book every day. You will not forget them. Thank you, NetGalley, for an ARC.

3.5 rounded to 4.

Debut novel, The Rabbit Hutch, drops you in the middle of a dying city for the span of a few days. You feel the distress of a range of characters all tied together by La Lapinière - the Rabbit Hutch. Paranoia, obsession, fear, shame, pleasure, loneliness, and desperation all culminate in an act that grants Blandine, apartment C4, her greatest desire: transcendence.

Tess Gunty immediately grips you and pulls you in with a bold move to show her cards within the very first paragraph. For a debut novel, this book is impressive. Gunty certainly knows her way around a sentence. I wish I had kept track of how many times I reread a sentence because of its charm. The description of characters and their surroundings was delectable. However, despite a strong start and a strong ending, there were points midway where I nearly walked away. I can understand a focus on characters vs plot but there were long winded sections with not enough to hold it all together. I enjoyed that it was a bit all over the board but some of the moving pieces were lackluster at best.

Would love to see another novel from Gunty.

Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group sent me a digital copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Exceptional. A real piece of absurdist literature that doesn't feel put-on or overly quirky for the sake of shock-value. Though some of the subplots felt tangential, I still enjoyed them thoroughly and preferred how they added to the texture of the story. Will recommend this book to my patrons.

What shape will our lives take if we're not loved enough? What do we owe to those we love? To those who love us? To each other as a broader community?
In The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty introduces us to characters living within the same low-income apartment complex in a run-down Midwestern town at the brink of gentrification. One of the main characters is Blandine, a brilliant but eccentric 18 year old who spends her free time reading about female mystics and wishing she could exit her body. She has completely entranced the three boys that she lives with, and they become focused on proving their love to her in misguided and bizarre ways.
This was an ambitious book. It's a character study while also being a critique of America as a whole with commentary on income inequality, the climate crisis, and capitalism--- problems that converge and impact people and their ability to connect to and relate to one another.
Gunty's writing is exquisite. She made me care deeply for these characters, and even though the culminating moment is teased within the first sentences of the book, she still does a great job of creating that tension.
My main critique is that she does incorporate a bit too much of the language from the mystics that Blandine is obsessed with (specifically from Hildegard von Bingen), and I'm not sure what this added. There were also a couple of threads that I wish Gunty had tied up a bit more, like Blandine's activism and a different character's mysterious game of Clue.
Overall, an engrossing read that I know I'll need to think more about to truly make sense of. Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

Tess Gunty's debut covers a lot of ground. Plotlines overlap and perspectives hop around: a young mother develops a phobia of her newborn's eyes, a cerebral teenager consults the mystics and exits her body, the son of a newly deceased actress covers himself in glowstick fluid, three boys age out of the foster care system and flirt with animal sacrifice etc. Keen, captivating, and character driven. Would recommend.

The Rabbit Hutch immediately became my favorite book of the year. I can't wait for everyone I know to read this! Some of the most brilliant writing I've read in ages, this book completely blew my mind.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this impressive debut story!
The Rabbit Hutch is a book like no other I have come across in a very long time. It is set in a low rental apartment dwelling in the midwest. We are introduced to the characters and intimate and at times, unusual ways. The all “come to life” so vividly, and before long, we know them and their stories. The way the voices are projected is purely remarkable writing and storytelling. You will not be disappointed and will also perhaps see your own neighbors in a different light.

As with all of my reviews these days, I will focus more on my reaction to the book than on summarizing the plot, as so many other reviewers have done that expertly already. In this case it is perhaps a more appropriate tactic, since this is not a plot-driven novel at all. This is about the craft of writing (think newly minted MFA) rather than the craft of story-telling. It is also about place, and that place is bleak -- rust-belt America and its trapped and down-trodden inhabitants. What shines most brightly is the author's gift for capturing the human psyche at its most vulnerable and insecure. Gunty portrays her characters' most intimate thoughts, desires and doubts with incredible nuance and sensitivity, whether the character makes only a fleeting appearance or is centered in the narrative. The story, however, feels disjointed and imbalanced, jumping from minor to major character, from the present to the back story, without creating enough of an arc to compel the reader to want to keep turning the pages. The social commentary on American culture is biting to the point of nihilism, and though it rings true, this also inhibits its readability. This is a dark novel touching on themes of (almost) statutory rape, animal cruelty, mental illness, postpartum depression, urban decay, poverty, and, well, you get the idea. This is not for the faint of heart.

Brilliant but no for everybody. If you like an old fashioned story with a beginning and and an end this is not for you. If you like bold, fearless, rambling prose by all means read it!

This National Book Award winner is an endlessly intriguing story about the residents of an apartment complex informally called the Rabbit Hutch. It primarily focuses on Blandine, a much too intelligent eighteen year old girl, as she navigates life sharing an apartment with three boys after she drops out of high school. The supporting characters were just as dynamic and well written as Blandine herself. Tess Gunty is a massive talent and I can’t wait for her next book.

Tess Gunty is an extraordinary writer, unfurling sentences so delightful that you have to go back and read them again. The first paragraph made me sigh with satisfaction and settle in for a wonderful read. “The Rabbit Hutch” Is on nearly everyone’s Best Fiction of 2022 list and has won the National Book Award. So why was I barely able to get through it?

Gunty is brilliant with a great plot idea—follow the residents of a low income apartment building in a rusted industrial town in Indiana. The “Rabbit Hutch” (local translation of its French name) houses all types, and many are former foster children who have exited the system. There are also a pair of new parents, a gentle older woman. The story fans out from there, with too many characters and too many opportunities left unexplored. I didn’t find “The Rabbit Hutch” terribly weird, just disjointed. If those attempts to conjure the weird had been minimized, I think we’d have a much more satisfying novel about a group of people whose lives are rarely explored.

I look forward to Tess Gunty’s next novel and hope to see her exciting writing style put to different use, where her obvious talent is in service to her characters.

Thank you to the publisher (Knopf) and NewGalley for the DRC of this novel is exchange for an honest review.

Short listed for the National Book Award in 2022.

I listened to audiobook and e-book in tandem. Well narrated, interesting story but I DNF'd. Found the story line to be too esoteric for me. However, the writing is really stellar.

This is so unlike anything I've ever read. It's a whole new thing. I'm kind of speechless. How brilliantly and beautifully written. This book didn't even need a plot. I was hooked from the first page, but I went through this slowly because I didn't ever want to leave Tess Gunty's voice behind. What a special thing this is.

Something I especially enjoyed is how it handled the burden of being...well, special. How it's not all it's cracked up to be. How tortured genius backfires, and not just through lifelong mental illness.

How clever and weird. I love it.

While I felt this book started off well, with a quirky set of characters and the insular setting of a shared apartment building, my interest and my patience ran out pretty quickly with so many digressions and extraneous characters who did nothing to enhance the main plot. Gunty, clearly, can wield some pretty sparkling prose, but in this story, we were treated to way too many themes, and plot elements which felt more cliched than interesting. A novel about loneliness and family, mental health, and certainly vulnerability, will have its share of depressed and angry characters, but these characters all felt too similar, too hyper-aware of their own self-loathing. It all became pretty predictable, and the story degenerated from quirky into trying too hard to be unique. That being said, Tess Gunty has got my attention, and I am looking forward to seeing what she does next.

I only read about 25% and that was more than enough for me. It seemed like one long paragraph and that drives me crazy.
It seemed like a bunch of people lived in a building and had no lives to speak of, but took forever to tell about them. Nope, not for me.
Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest opinion.

Inventive, strange, beautiful. A really daring new voice that reminds of the new sincerity movement. I was really hooked by the playfulness of the voice. And for once, an ensemble cast seemed to work seamlessly!

I decided to read this book purely for the praise and award season buzz, without any idea of the plot. I'm so pleased that I went in without any opinions formed, because I was able to just experience the book. In this spirit, I'll avoid describing the plot here, and instead I'll just say that I found this novel so compelling and will be thinking about it for a long time. I loved the way we cut between scenes, locations, people, and their apartments. The overlapping stories all connected somehow, but there was no neat wrap-up at the end, like there often is in books with parallel plot lines. I adored the character of Blandine and rooted for her so hard.

CW: Animal cruelty. I didn't expect animal cruelty to be part of this book, and I was already very invested when it came up, so I just skipped parts I felt nervous about. I got the gist and skipping bits didn't take away from the story, but I totally understand if this deters some readers from giving this one a go.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-galley.

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The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty is a novel about residents of low-income housing in a fictional Indiana town. This is Ms. Gunty’s debut novel.

The story takes place in the low-income apartment building known as The Rabbit Hutch to its residents and La Lapinière Affordable Housing Complex in Vacca Vale, Indiana. It is on a hot night, in Apartment C4, when 18-year-old Blandine Watkins exits her body, almost in the same way her name sake, Saint Blandine, did 2,000 years ago.

Blandine had a difficult life, and she lives with three other post-foster teenagers in The Rabbit Hutch. We work our way through the 48 hours of the revelation of how Blandine exits her body, and the people around her living in a dying town.

The novel is off to a slow start, but I found it full of symbolism. Starting, of course, at apartment C4, where people are cramped like rabbits, to the teen who named herself Blandine, after a Christian Saint protected by wild beasts.

While Blandine tries to find order, The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty culminates in a scene of bloody chaos (and a wild beast to boot). Reading a bit about Saint Blandine (Blandina), helped me understand the correlation between our literary protagonist and the parallels the author drew.

The fictional town of Vacca Vale, Indiana comes to life better than expected. It is a run-down town, way past its glory days when the Zorn automobile company thrived. Today, like many towns of America’s heartlands, the town had degraded with its people into absurdity, along with members of the Zorn family, living on past glories.

The apartment complex is full of characters that would seem familiar to anyone who lived in one. Bickering couples, the lonely ones who resent the opposite sex, young mothers, babies and children – all living too close for comfort.

Symbolism aside, which you don’t have to understand to enjoy the story, the narrative is full of ideas. Each one of those ideas would make an excellent story, but all together they feel unbalanced. The story digresses from the main narrative, and then nudges the reader back in, only to digress again. Done a few times, and the way Ms. Gunty wrote it, that’s a winning formula. However, I felt that in this instance, this mechanism was done too much. Nevertheless, this is a well-written novel, thoughtful, and quite smart as well.