Rabbit Cake - Softcover

Hartnett, Annie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 194104056X ISBN 13: 9781941040560

Publisher: Tin House Books, 2017

Synopsis

People Magazine Book of the Week

A Best Book of the Year at Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, The Chicago Review of Books, Minnesota Public Radio, and more

An Indies Introduce and Indie Next Pick

Fans of Maria Semple's Where'd You Go Bernadette and and Kevin Wilson's The Family Fang will delight in Annie Hartnett's debut, a darkly comic novel about a young girl named Elvis trying to figure out her place in a world without her mother.

Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months. But there are things Elvis doesn’t yet know―like how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning herself while sleep-eating or why her father has started wearing her mother's silk bathrobe around the house. Elvis investigates the strange circumstances of her mother's death and finds comfort, if not answers, in the people (and animals) of Freedom, Alabama. As hilarious a storyteller as she is heartbreakingly honest, Elvis is a truly original voice in this exploration of grief, family, and the endurance of humor after loss.

About this title

About the Author:

Annie Hartnett was the 2013-2014 winner of the Writer in Residence Fellowship for the Associates of the Boston Public Library and has received awards and honors from the Bread Loaf School of English, McSweeney's, and Indiana Review. Hartnett received her MFA in Fiction from the University of Alabama, an MA from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English, and currently teaches at Grub Street, an independent writing center in Boston. She lives with her husband and their beloved border collie in Providence, Rhode Island.

Review:

“[A] treasure. Books about grief are rarely funny and adorable―this one is.”
- People Magazine

“A brilliant book . . . How a whip-smart young girl handles the loss of her mother and the reorientation of her family; charming and beautifully written.”
- Kirkus, Starred Review

“In Hartnett’s winning debut, a memorable young narrator’s desire for rationality wrestles with her grief. . . . Affecting.”
- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“For your canon-coming-of-age-novel consideration: Meet Elvis Babbitt. A preteen whose mother recently drowned, Elvis is trying to understand the world around her. Funny and heartfelt, Rabbit Cake manages adult questions with a tween's sense of wonder. ”
- Marie Claire

“Darkly funny and soulful . . . Hartnett imbues Elvis with that capacity to be both self-aware and childlike that places her in a tradition of independent minded, motherless heroines ― from Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, to the eponymous Ellen Foster, and Ruth from Housekeeping. . . . Rabbit Cake is Elvis’s unpredictable story of healing, and the young woman at its center is immediately lovable because she is delightfully human.”
- The Boston Globe

“This is a truly terrific and original novel about grief, family, and finding hope in the aftermath.”
- Booklist

“Hartnett tells the story with immeasurable heart, wit, and charm. The book’s got perfect pitch from open to close.”
- Minnesota Public Radio, #1 Fiction Pick of 2017

“Hartnett tells the story with immeasurable heart, wit, and charm. The book’s got perfect pitch from open to close.”
- The Chicago Review of Books, Best Books of the Year

“Irresistible...[the book is] both gentle exploration of loss (Elvis’s mother, in the opening pages, has drowned) and quirkily funny coming-of-age tale, marking its Rhode Island-based author as a talent to watch.”
- The Seattle Times

“Heartbreak and dark comedy fuse together in this endearing story of family dysfunction and loss. I cheered for young Elvis Babbitt and the entire cast of quirky characters as they stumbled along a twisted path toward healing.”
- Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and Looking for Me

About this edition

• Publisher: Tin House Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 194104056X
• ISBN 13: 9781941040560
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344