on the year of the water rabbit
Longevity, Terry Miles's Rabbits, Mona Awad's Bunny, Bora Chung's Cursed Bunny, Sarah Winman's When God was a Rabbit, and Tess Gunty's The Rabbit Hutch. And Donna Tartt. Who is rabbit free.
22 Jan 23 | Vol 2 Issue 1
Kung Hei Fat Choi
What’s this? Two issues on the same day? When I started this column I didn’t imagine a years time hence, having written fifty-two issues. I didn’t plan, I simply started. This is the best way to begin — or end — anything. Don’t wait for a perfect moment, an auspicious day, the right time. Just start. Straight away.
Today is the first day of the Chinese Lunar Year of the Water Rabbit. It is also the day I published my fifty-second issue. I am a water rabbit. This is my year. How could I not overlook the beautiful serendipity of completing a year’s writing arriving on the very same day we get to celebrate just once a lifetime. The next year of The Water Rabbit will be 2083, and the last was 1963. So excuse a little shoe-horning to start volume II on the first day of my year. Henceforth Consume and Enjoy will follow the lunar year. Here’s to all you fellow water rabbits. [1 ]
Over the course of the last year I’ve read or recommended a few books with rabbits in the title. It seems churlish not to, and indeed propitious to do so — to present a rounding up of recent bunny themed novels. Rounding up only in the most metaphorical sense, all rabbits to be free and fortuitous this year please.
When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman | Buy here
From May. A present from Anne, gifted solely because of the title, and not my usual read. The most vanilla of the books here, is it a coming of age? A Bildungsroman? (there are very few chances to use that word since learning it). A meditation on grief, hope and fate, featuring an archetypal John Irving-esque family (is that an oxymoron?), and just the tiniest touch of magical realism. [2 ]
Rabbits by Terry Miles | Buy here
Recommended back in March. A surreal page-turner. [3 ]
Where is all this heading with themes of pattern recognition, paranoia, etc, all convoluting in ever decreasing circles down the rabbit hole? “Rabbits” by Terry Miles is where. Being shallow, I freely admit it was purchased mainly on the strength of it being entitled Rabbits. And there being a rabbit on the jacket too.
Originally a podcast, it’s fairly indescribable except to say if you enjoy the sort of semantics and armchair pop culture pattern seeking this column indulges in, but feel it needs more paranoia, then this is a novel for you. I loved it. A compulsive read.
Actually the best thing about it is perhaps, having read it on the Kobo (it’s a non-evil-empire-Kindle type ebook reader), when finishing it, where the device then recommends other similar books - it couldn’t find anything.
Rabbits is Ready Player One written by Kafka. By the way, I thought Ready Player One was overrated, with Spielberg utterly muffing the adaptation. He didn’t go full meta, and instead removed all references to himself that occur in the book - simulation argument indeed, hiding the hand of the creator.
Bunny by Mona Awad | Buy here
I’m somewhat amazed I’ve never recommended this. The official blurb runs like this —
We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny.
Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort – a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other 'Bunny'.
But then the Bunnies issue her with an invitation and Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole.
Part The Secret History, part Life of Pi, part Heathers. Wholly original, in that it doesn’t merely read as a diminutive hashing of other tropes. Similar to The Jacques Lacan Foundation it’s one of those book you buy solely because of the title (well, I do anyway) Which you hope you’ll like, which indeed you do as you start reading, and which you end up adoring by the end. I would be happy to read again, more sure footed, the first time round there being a certain amount of mental hooping about, processing the evolving narrative.
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung | Buy here
Recommending in the sense that I bought a copy. It’s sitting in my to-be-read pile. Actually, I read the first story, then figured I would need some space to get the most from it. To allow its atmosphere to envelop me, with time to reflect. On the bus into town wasn’t going to cut it. I could explain, or quote the publishers description —
Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.
The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty | Buy here
The only book listed that I don’t currently own. This popped up recently on the Dirt Discord group — Dirt being a newsletter about digital pop culture, all zeitgeist, and Millennial slash Gen Z cultural analysis. It too has been pinned with The Secret History badge. The rule of three steps in — recommended by social group I respect, tick. Features rabbits, tick. Donna Tartt comparison, tick. I’m in. Purchasing now.
Set over one sweltering week in July and culminating in a bizarre act of violence that finally changes everything, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America, a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and longing, entrapment and, ultimately, freedom.
Behind the thin walls of a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial centre of Vacca Vale, Indiana, residents search for meaning in their lives. An online obituary writer. A young mother with a dark secret. A woman waging a solo campaign against rodents. And Blandine, who shares her flat with three teenage boys she neither likes nor understands, all, like her, now aged out of the state foster care system that has repeatedly failed them.
Welcome to the Rabbit Hutch.
This week featured
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Winman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_(podcast)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Awad
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bora_Chung
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tess_Gunty
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Tartt
Buy me a coffee at www.buymeacoffee.com/vfnIE9P0Ta
Illustration by Fatima Fletcher
The amazing artist Fatima Fletcher is artist in residence. The hero image is a portrait of the author as a rabbit.
Please show Fatima your love by following and liking every single one of her posts at www.instagram.com/fatima.fletcher, and visiting fatimafletcher.com, where her work is for sale, she is available for commissions.
Her wonderful Ruff Ruff coasters are for sale at fatima-fletcher.square.site/s/shop
Send to a friend
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References
In the case of my friend Nick, that’s sparkling water with lime juice rabbit.
Longevity, peace and prosperity!
Excellent