Pyramids Ubiquitous's Reviews > The Rabbit Hutch

It is almost always a red flag for me when an author wins a major book award for a debut novel. The Rabbit Hutch is such a debut novel and follows the mold of the many, many pseudo-autobiographical debut novels on the market right now. These books that are "inspired" by an author's hometown or time the author spent doing x leave the author with very little to contribute beyond their debut work.

The Rabbit Hutch is a reel of modern-day anxieties which results in a frankly bonkers climax that doesn't seem to have much to do with any of the narrator's lecturing. It's not shocking, it's just baffling. Gunty possesses a good technical writing skill and is clearly intelligent, but many of her choices simply don't land. Most glaringly, every character speaks like a Liberal Arts major and over-analyzes every single situation. It's exhausting. The nail in the coffin for me was a 15-page argument between two of the main characters where our protagonist was paralleling their relationship with capitalism. The eyeroll nearly gave me an aneurism. Much of the prose falls into this trap of Inclusion Bingo and the author could really benefit from showing and not telling. This can't be the same award society that boldly honored Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.