The Rabbit Hutch opens with the following: “On a hot night in Apartment C4, Blandine Watkins exits her body. She is only 18 years old, but she has spent most of her life wishing for this to happen. The mystics call this experience the Transverberation of the Heart, or the Seraph’s Assault, but no angel appears to Blandine. There is, however, a bioluminescent man in his 50s.” Nancy notes that our August book, The Marriage Portrait, started with the protagonist realizing her husband planned to kill her. In this book we start, learning that our protagonist, basically is dying. Throughout the book, we learn how this young woman is dying and why she has been wishing to do so. For me, that was a great opening and it really kept me intrigued as we go on all sorts of digressions, learning about other residents of her low-income housing project and others who seem to have no connection to her. Nancy loved the opening. Linda was confused by the beginning of the novel and in fact continued to be confused for many chapters, needing to take notes on who lived where in the housing complex. Linda felt Blandine’s intellect as way beyond her age, but was emotionally and socially insecure, lacking strong positive adult relationships. Her mother has died of an oxycodone overdose; her father is in jail; the foster care system has been unmindful; her high school theatre teacher has seduced her and then ghosted her. She is beautiful, as we hear others describe her so repeatedly, and she is brilliant and loves reading about medieval women saints. She also loves the environment and the one remaining place of beauty in Vacca Valley that is about to be developed. So, there are a lot of themes in this book. Blandine, though, is the character that pulls all the disparate themes and other characters together. Nancy and Linny discuss James Yager, Blandine’s high school theatre teacher who draws her into an emotional and then sexual relationship. Although the book is ambiguous, neither Nancy nor Linny believed James story that he had not engaged in a sexual relationship with a classmate several years older than Blandine, Zoe. Nancy and Linny discuss rabbits as a recurring motif throughout the book. The affordable housing building Blandine lives in was originally built for workers of the now-shuttered Zorn automobile plant. It was named La Lapiniere, French for “The Bunny”, but now referred to by everyone as The Rabbit Hutch. Bunnies are everywhere in this book. The epigram is a quote from a woman who was featured in Roger & Me the documentary about Flint, Michigan’s economic decline. She says, “If you don’t sell them as pets, you got to get rid of them as meat … If you don’t have 10 separate cages for them, then they start fighting. Then the males castrate the other males … They chew their balls right off.” Rabbits and other animals are either dead or dying. All except rats which we are told surpass Vacca Vale’s human population by 30,000. Tess Gunty said she was interested in writing about how structural violence generates personal violence. Nancy felt the rabbits symbolized animals that are trapped in an overcrowded world and are forced to fight. For Linny, the rabbit symbolized life and even a sort of innocence. Linny notes that in interviews, Tess Gunty said that South Bend, Indiana, of her childhood was the inspiration for Vacca Vale. South Bend is where Studebakers were manufactured and when that automobile company went bankrupt and closed, like Gunty’s Zorn Automotives, the town was cast into a deep depression and choking nostalgia for lost prosperity. Nancy enjoyed the depiction of communities who have lost their major industries. Nancy remembers Woolrich, PA, where Linny and Nancy spent some years growing up, and the economic shock when its major employer, Woolrich Woolen Mills, closed. Linda likes the economic and environmental backdrop to Blandine’s story. Linda was suspicious of Blandine’s three roommates. Nancy, instead, was sympathetic of the roommates and didn’t think any of the roommates would be the person who assaults Blandine. Nancy likes the connection between Joan and Blandine at the end because it seems like a real human connection and one that will help them both. She felt that it was a difficult book with some hope at the end. Linda observes Nancy liked the book more than she did. Linda notes that she has never called Nancy mid-reading and asked what the book was about! In the end, Linny and Nancy just want Blandine to get her GED and get to a local college to unstick herself.