Ari Levine's Reviews > The Rabbit Hutch

WINNER OF THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
2.5, rounded up. Tess Gunty is an undeniably talented prose writer, reminiscent of David Foster Wallace in her extended arias of hyper-articulate pseudo-philosophical inner monologues, which had occasional moments of brilliance. But the ultra-self-conscious quirkiness became tiresome over 300 pages, and despite the shifts in perspective from one resident of a depressing Rust Belt apartment building to another (the Foster-Wallacey "La Lapinière Affordable Housing Complex"), most of these inner voices felt depressingly similar in their monomaniacal archness and hyper-articulate self-loathing.

Beyond its forced kookiness, what really bothered me about this novel was the general hackneyed-ness of the narrative elements, and especially Gunty's general coastal-elite contempt for her struggling characters and Midwestern setting. Vacca Vale is a parody of a gutted postindustrial Indiana city, hollowed out by the collapse of the auto industry and poisoned with toxic waste, inhabited by the hopeless poor, who are cross-addicted to convenience store junk food, opioids, and social media, and lorded over by a shadowy cabal of corrupt politicians and relentless tech-bro developers hell-bent on building a neoliberal utopia for corporate douchebags. Anyone who's currently experiencing the American berserk would learn absolutely nothing from this, because we're already living in this imitation of a parody.

Blandine Watkins, our plucky heroine, is the very embodiment of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl (thanks to my GR friend Jennifer's review for doing a huge public service in being the first to point this out), a brilliant high-school dropout obsessed with the medieval mystic Hildegarde von Bingen, seeking to be released from her body and experience divine union, waging a performance-art war with voodoo dolls and animal dung to preserve a park from encroaching development. Her backstory as a 17-year-old seduced by her 40-something drama teacher was a lazy recapitulation of a hoary cliché. And who knew that Hollywood stars from the golden age of TV could have been criminally negligent, drug-addicted parents, and that their kids could end up psychologically wrecked for life? Or that late-teenaged dudes who grew up in foster care would goad each other into increasingly horrific animal abuse?

Gunty has loads of talent to burn, but nothing new to say.