Tess Gunty

The Rabbit Hutch Tess Gunty

A debut novel about an odd assortment of residents living in a crumbling apartment building in the post-industrial Midwest.

Once a bustling industrial center, Vacca Vale, Indiana is now no more than another notch in the Rust Belt, and its inhabitants are no exception. In a run-down apartment building on the edge of town, commonly known as the Rabbit Hutch, a number of these people, those left behind, now reside quietly out-of-place. Apartment C2 is lonely and detached. C6 is aging and stuck. C8 harbors an extraordinary fear. But C4 is of particular interest. Here live four products of the state foster care system: three teenage boys and one girl, Blandine. Hauntingly beautiful and unnervingly bright, Blandine is plagued by her past and by the structures, people, and places that not only failed her, but actively harmed her. Now, all that Blandine wants is an escape, true bodily escape like the mystics describe in the books she reads. In The Rabbit Hutch, Tess Gunty has written a gorgeous and provocative tale of searching and longing and of pain and healing. Hers is a voice bristling with intelligence and vulnerability.