2023 ALA Notable Books for Adults (nominee)
2023 British Book Award Debut Book of the Year (nominee)
2022 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize for Fiction
2022 John Leonard Prize for Best First Book (nominee)
2022 National Book Award for Fiction
2022 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • The standout literary debut that everyone is talking about • "Inventive, heartbreaking and acutely funny."—The Guardian
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, TIME, NPR, Oprah Daily, People
Blandine isn't like the other residents of her building.
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.
Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch.
Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, Blandine shares her apartment with three teenage boys she neither likes nor understands, all, like her, now aged out of the state foster care system that has repeatedly failed them, all searching for meaning in their lives.
Set over one sweltering week in July and culminating in a bizarre act of violence that finally changes everything, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America, a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and longing, entrapment and, ultimately, freedom.
"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
Genre: Literary Fiction
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, TIME, NPR, Oprah Daily, People
Blandine isn't like the other residents of her building.
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.
Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch.
Ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent, Blandine shares her apartment with three teenage boys she neither likes nor understands, all, like her, now aged out of the state foster care system that has repeatedly failed them, all searching for meaning in their lives.
Set over one sweltering week in July and culminating in a bizarre act of violence that finally changes everything, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America, a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and longing, entrapment and, ultimately, freedom.
"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
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"As a testament to this book's generosity, the music of George Saunders, Dorothy Parker, David Foster Wallace, maybe Rachel Cusk emerges... 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." - Mark Z Danielewski
"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
"The Rabbit Hutch is philosophical, and earthy, and tender and also simply very fun to read - Tess Gunty is a distinctive talent, with a generous and gently brilliant mind." - Rivka Galchen
"'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
"Tess Gunty is a younger writer of uncommon originality, both in terms of voice and vision. I admire her work and expect to be reading it with especial delight for a long time to come." - Rick Moody
"Tess Gunty is a masterful talent with a remarkable eye for the poetic, the poignant and the absurdly sublime. The Rabbit Hutch unspools the story of Blandine Watkins and other inhabitants of a rundown building on the edge of the once bustling Vacca Vale, Indiana. A brutal and beautiful novel that both delights and devastates with its unflinching depiction of Rust Belt decline, Gunty's debut is a tour de force that's sure to top this year's best-of lists." - Lauren Wilkinson
"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
"The Rabbit Hutch is philosophical, and earthy, and tender and also simply very fun to read - Tess Gunty is a distinctive talent, with a generous and gently brilliant mind." - Rivka Galchen
"'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
"Tess Gunty is a younger writer of uncommon originality, both in terms of voice and vision. I admire her work and expect to be reading it with especial delight for a long time to come." - Rick Moody
"Tess Gunty is a masterful talent with a remarkable eye for the poetic, the poignant and the absurdly sublime. The Rabbit Hutch unspools the story of Blandine Watkins and other inhabitants of a rundown building on the edge of the once bustling Vacca Vale, Indiana. A brutal and beautiful novel that both delights and devastates with its unflinching depiction of Rust Belt decline, Gunty's debut is a tour de force that's sure to top this year's best-of lists." - Lauren Wilkinson
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