The Rabbit Hutch is a 2022 debut novel by American novelist Tess Gunty and winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction. Gunty also won the inaugural Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for the novel.
Writing and development The novel includes the perspectives of multiple characters. Gunty credits The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams as the "novel that began" The Rabbit Hutch, as it was the first in a series of unrelated "polyphonic" novels that Gunty read.
Plot background This formally experimental and asymmetric novel is told largely from a third-person omniscient point-of-view, with protagonist Blandine as the focal character. The setting is the fictional post-industrial city of Vacca Vale, Indiana. The novel’s main protagonist is 18-year-old Blandine (formerly Tiffany Watkins), a highly gifted young woman who has recently dropped out of high school and graduated from the state’s foster care system. Most of the characters live in the low-income La Lapiniere Affordable Housing Complex.
Major characters
Blandine, born Tiffany Watkins, is a former student at St. Philomena’s, Vacca Vale’s only private high school, where “the teachers liked her because she was brainy and tragic.” Hope: She is a new mother who develops a phobia for her baby’s eyes. She is married to Anthony, a construction worker. Elsie Blitz: She appears in the novel posthumously in blog posts and in an “auto-obituary.”Gunty, 2022, p. 11, pp. 40-48 Her career as a child TV star endeared her to many people, in the United States and internationally, as the ebullient Suzie Evans of Meet the Neighbors, a mid-20th century sitcom. Elsie is fondly “frozen forever at the age of eleven” in the hearts of her aging fans.Gunty, 2022, p. 11 Elsie’s rosy public image is sharply disputed by her only child, Moses Robert Blitz. Moses Robert Blitz: The disaffected son of a former child television star Elsie Blitz, who lives an almost exclusively digital life and terrorizes his “enemies” with nocturnal visits in the nude, covered in glow stick paint. Malik, Jack and Todd, the three young men who are Blandine’s roommates. They induce Blandine to “exit her body” in the narrative’s climax. Joan Kowalski. Joan, who “has the posture of a question mark” and a “voice like a communion wafer—tasteless, light,” screens user comments for Restinpeace.com, an online obituary site. Withdrawn and isolated, she does not approve of her neighbor Blandines’ lifestyle.
Plot synopsis
The novel has no table of contents. It is organized into five parts (Parts I-V), comprising a total of 42 individually titled sections. The page numbers for each section are provided below.
PART I
The Opposite of Nothing p. 3-4 Blandine reports an out-of-body experience—“exits her body” —the nature of which is not clear. She resides in apartment C4 at The Rabbit Hutch with three boys just out of their teens: Malik, Jack and Todd. Like Blandine, they have recently been released from the foster home system. All Together, Now pp. 5–17 Hope, a newlywed mother with a four-month-old son, is struggling with postpartum depression. Socially isolated and alienated from her construction worker husband, Anthony, she develops a phobia of her baby’s eyes. Hope is in the habit of killing mice in snap-traps and dropping the carcasses on the balcony of the apartment below, occupied by an elderly couple, Ida and Reggie. Ida is outraged and insists on retribution.
PART II
Afterlife pp. 21–29 While at the local laundromat, Blandine meets her downstairs neighbor, Joan Kowalski, and introduces herself. Joan is wary and taciturn. Blandine, who has an enthusiasm for researching female mystics, launches into a discourse on religion, first quoting from 12th century Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen. Joan is offended by Blandines cheerful blasphemies (Blandine considers “divine ecstasies” to be “an elevated form of masturbation”). Joan flees outside to make a phone call. Blandine is troubled at her own inability to modulate her interpersonal encounters, fearing she may have a “social impairment.” Blandine departs the laundry for the Vacca Vale Country Club, carrying two cotton bags filled—not with laundry— but a collection of figurine fetishes, fake blood vials, bags of dirt and small animal skeletons. A Threat to Us All: Vaca Vale Gazette pp. 30–33 Vaca Vale is revealed as a social catastrophe for its working-class residents in the aftermath of the closure of the local Zorn Automobile factory. The city has declared bankruptcy and faces unincorporation. Unemployment has reached 11.7%; murders, assaults, burglaries, rapes and arson are at alltime highs. The article reports that the town is ranked among the “top ten dying American cities.” The rat population, at 30,000, exceeds that of humans. New York City developers, with support of the mayor, have procured contracts to “revitalize” Vaca Vale by constructing tech startups in an area of local natural beauty, Chastity Valley. The plan promises to “attract talent from around the world.” A posh dinner, celebrating the launch of the project, is underway at the Vaca Vale Country Club, when debris falls from the ceiling vents, scattering the attendees. The tables are littered with handmade voodoo dolls, dirt and animal bones. The event is canceled, but the Gazette article reports that the revitalization plan will continue as scheduled. Where Life Lives On pp. 34–39 The narrator explains the origins of La Lapiniere Affordable Housing Complex, dubbed “The Rabbit Hutch” by its low-income residents. A Christian philanthropist had donated the funds for the project. The 40-year-old Joan Kowalski’s job entails posting and screening user comments for Restinpeace.com, an online obituary site. When an offensive comment concerning the recently deceased former child TV star Elsie Blitz is submitted by the decedent’s own son, Joan feels compelled to approve it. When the posting comes to the attention of management, she is roundly reprimanded. Joan’s supervisor reminds her “Defecation emojis are unacceptable…Really, Joan. Wake up." Joan, reading the Gazette article on the recent disruption at the country club, suspects that the odd girl she met at the laundromat—“pale, white-hairled, elven, thin. Pretty in a strange way”—might be the culprit. An Absolutely True Story pp. 40–48 The deceased TV star Elsie Blitz has written and posted her own obituary shortly before her death. Her “auto-obituary” includes a section on Life Lessons, as well as a letter to her only son, Moses Robert Blitz, and closes with an essay describing her first encounter with the Angel of Death at age 85. Hear Me Out pp. 49–55 The chapter is told as a first-person confessional narrative by Jack, describing how the three boys, including Jack, fell in love with Blandine. Most of the boys have not maintained good relations with their foster families. R.I.P. Tho: Guest Book pp. 56–60 This chapter offers postings on the Elsie Blitz obituary page that originate all over the United States and Internationally, including India, Hong Kong and Sweden. The comment from her son, Moses, is among the posts, including the declaration that “ELSIE WAS A #SHITTYMOTHER.” Intonation pp. 61–64 Moses attends a cocktail party at an upscale loft in Los Angeles after his mother’s death. He identifies himself as a mental health blogger, but can offer no academic credentials to justify his activity. When challenged, Moses defends himself: “I exclusively chronicle my own personal (italics) mental health…Each man is an expert on himself.” A female guest responds: “Your speech is codified in patriarchal microaggressions.” Moses flees the gathering. Big pp. 65–70 The chapter describes Blandine’s place of employment, the Ampersand diner, where she waitresses. The restaurant was established by “optimistic hippies” and offers “avant-garde pies” with names such as “avocado rhubarb, black mold, strawberry tomato vinegar, banana charcoal, and broccoli peach.” Blandine admits she is not a good waitress. Please Just pp. 71–73 Joan is sensitive to human noise and is suffering from the commotions emitted from apartment C4 where Blandine and her roommates carouse. On a train trip to Gary, Indiana, she is plagued by people who interrupt her peace. When she attempts to escape to a quieter compartment, the female occupant tells her “Please shut up and leave me alone!” My First Was a Fish pp. 74–80 Jack provides a narrative of his years with foster parents, Cathy and Robert. He describes the relationship with them as unobtrusive and benign, but people he “never believed in.” He remains a troubled youth, The “brightest thing” during this period is an affair with Anna, a community college student. She, too, is “unreal” to Jack. Jack collects a small dying fish by a river in February. He returns to the Rabbit Hutch and offers it to Blandine; who is greatly amused by the gift. Jack’s success deepens his conflict with Malik over who deserves Blandine’s affections. Chemical Hazard pp. 81–85 Rather than attend his mother’s funeral, Moses travels to Vaca Vale and prepares to punish Joan for deleting his scurrilous obituary post. Moses has developed a technique of stripping naked, covering his body in glow stick fluid, and entering his enemies homes at night in the dark, terrorizing them. Variables pp. 86–124 The chapter details an affair between the 42-year-old James Yager and the 17-year-old Tiffany Watkins. James is a music teacher at Vaca Vale’s only private high school, Tiffany, one of his students. Both are physically attractive and talented—he “the Cool Teacher,” she “the disposable ingenue.” James is married to Meg who has a Youtube show on vegan cooking. James enlists Tiffany as their babysitter. Post-affair, Tiffany sees nothing immoral about the sexual arrangement with James in terms of age, marital status or social status. The only unethical element is that the relationship “was always going to mean infinitely more to me than it meant to you, and you fucking knew it from the start.” Tiffany changes her name to Blandine, a teenage female mystic martyred by the Romans. She adopts Hildegard of Bingden as her patron saint. Graduating from the foster care system, she drops out of high school and moves into the Rabbit Hutch with Malik, Jack and Todd.
PART III
It Wasn’t Todd’s Idea pp. 127–131 Malik, Jack and Todd rarely see Blandine at the apartment after the fish incident. The boys agree cynically that Vaca Vale has no future. Malik bullies Todd into killing a baby mouse, who is momentarily traumatized by the incident. Namesake pp. 132–133 The historical details of the life of Blandine inspires Tiffany to legally change her name to the Christian saint. Pearl pp. 134–142 Just hours before Blandine “exits her body” she walks through Vaca Vale devastation that her post-industrial town has suffered after the Zorn Automobile operations had collapsed: a post-industrial nightmare confronts her. The Rotten Truth pp. 143–171 Moses arrives in Vaca Vale and tours the town, visiting a Catholic Church. Baptized in the faith as a boy, he recoils when a priest, Father Tim, inquires if he is there to confess. A peregrine falcon nesting in the church rafters with three young prompts him to recall his troubled childhood, the only son of a former child film star. Moses confesses after all, disgorging a disjointed narrative of his childhood and rage towards his mother. Afterward, Father Tim ministers to Moses to help him make sense of his suffering. A List of Hildegard Quotes, Written in a Notebook, Which Jack Reads on Wednesday Morning, Tracing the Word Nothing on His Skin With a Fingernail pp. 172–173 This chapter lists seventeen observations and maxims by Hildegard. Purebreds pp. 174–185