The Rabbit Hutch

'A firecracker debut. Seriously impressive... The writing is incandescent, the range of styles and voices remarkable... There’s so much dazzling stuff here.'

'Inventive, heartbreaking and acutely funny.'

'Throughout, tension is mixed with hilarity, heartbreak and hope.'

'Philosophical, and earthy, and tender and also simply very fun to read.' 

'Gunty writes with a keen, sensitive eye about all manner of intimacies.'

'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.'

'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.'

'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.'

'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.' 

'This breathtaking novel centres around the inhabitants of the Rabbit Hutch, a run-down apartment building at the edge of a dying city. Each of the inhabitants have their own challenges, but the four teenagers living there together are especially poised on the brink. Your allegiances will shift and shift again as the plot writhes toward a shocking, but inevitable, conclusion.'

'Remarkable... Brilliantly imaginative... Gunty is a wonderful writer, a master of the artful phrase... Best of all, her fully realized characters come alive on the page, capturing the reader and not letting go.'

'A stunning and original debut that is as smart as it is entertaining... With sharp prose and startling imagery, the novel touches on subjects from environmental trauma to rampant consumerism to sexual power dynamics to mysticism to mental illness, all with an astonishing wisdom and imaginativeness.'