Fiction Review: Rabbit Cake

Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett was my last full-length novel of the year, read in the last days of December, and I absolutely loved it. I didn't review every book I read last year (a new approach for me), but I wanted to review my favorites and this qualifies! I met Annie Hartnett in May at Booktopia 2023, an annual event I attend every spring in Vermont at the Northshire Bookstore. I loved her novel Unlikely Animals (my review at the link) and really enjoyed talking to her, asking questions, and listening to her talk about the writing of the book. So, I wanted to read from her backlist, and my husband gave me Rabbit Cake for my birthday. This warm, funny, deeply moving novel lived up to my expectations!

Elvis, named after Elvis Presley because she shares his birthday, is ten years old when her mother sleepwalks to the nearby river and drowns. For the next eighteen months, Elvis, her fifteen-year-old sister, Lizzie, and their father each deal with their shock and grief in different ways. Like their mother, Lizzie is also a chronic sleepwalker, and that increases and worsens in her grief, leading to ever more bizarre sights greeting Elvis and her dad in the morning, including terrifying spates of sleep-eating and egg stealing. Lizzie also decides to set a world record for baking rabbit cakes, following in her mom's footsteps, since she always made a three-dimensional rabbit cake for special occasions. Their dad discovers a local parrot in the pet store who mimics his wife's voice and comments and brings it home. He also starts wearing his wife's lipstick and bathrobe at home. Elvis is pretty lost, mostly worried about her dad and her sister, and determined to uncover the details of her mother's death. She loves animals (her mom was an animal biologist), so she continues working on the book about animals and sleep that her mom was writing and starts volunteering at the local zoo. But this family has a long way to go through their grief and coping to heal and reconnect with each other.

As in Unlikely Animals, Hartnett here has created wonderfully real characters struggling with some very serious issues, but she writes about it all with a hefty dose of humor (listen to the audio sample to get a feel for the tone). You can probably tell from my description above, which is just the tip of the iceberg, that these are some very quirky characters--and that's where some of the humor comes from--but aren't we all a little weird in our own ways? In spite of their flaws, the characters are very likable, and smart, precocious Elvis is a wonderful narrator. We see her family's issues through her eyes, as she strives to understand grief. The family goes through some big challenges along the way, from a runaway to a stint in a mental hospital to some stolen rats, but in the end, they find each other again and start to heal. I enjoyed every minute of this tender, compassionate, hilarious look at grief and family ties. It was the perfect way to end my reading year!

327 pages, Tin House

Blackstone Audio

This book fits in the following 2023 Reading Challenges:

 

Mount TBR Challenge

Literary Escapes Challenge - Alabama 

 

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