The Rabbit Hutch

The Rabbit Hutch (2022) is American writer Tess Gunty’s debut novel. It won the National Book Award for Fiction, the inaugural Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, and lauded American writer Jonathan Safran Foer praised it as a “profoundly wise, wildly inventive, deeply moving work of art” whose every page contains “a novel, a world” (1). Before writing her debut, Gunty earned her MFA in New York University’s MFA in Creative Writing program, where she was awarded the Lillian Vernon Fellowship, and her work was named “Most Outstanding Undergraduate Poetry Collection” at Notre Dame University in 2015. Her short fiction, nonfiction prose, and poetry have appeared in publications like Granta, Los Angeles Review of Books, Joyland, and The Iowa Review.

This study guide refers to the 2022 Oneworld Publications Kindle edition.

CONTENT WARNING: The source text includes depictions of physical violence towards women and scenes of animal sacrifice.

Plot Summary

The novel begins with the scene where 18-year-old medieval-mysticism devotee Blandine Watkins exits her body, just as the mystics did. While no angel appears, “there is, however, a bioluminescent man in his fifties, glowing like a firefly” (8). During this moment, Blandine experiences a feeling of unity with the rest of Creation.

The narrative then jumps back to the few days before Blandine exits her body to give a panoramic view of both her life and the lives of her coresidents in the La Lapinière Affordable Housing Complex in Vacca Vale, Indiana. Although the protagonists barely know each other, their actions affect each other, as does the climate of economic decline and social neglect in their post-industrial town.

Intellectually brilliant, ethereally beautiful Blandine has turned her back on the promise of college or a future outside of Vacca Vale; an affair with her high-school music teacher James Yager left her disillusioned with formal systems of education. Instead, she is devoted to the idea of sabotaging the Vacca Vale development project, one that will see condominiums polluting the landscape of her beloved natural retreat, Chastity Valley. She does this by throwing a mass of animal skeletons and fake blood at one of the developers’ dinners. She is also obsessed with medieval mystics, particularly the 12th-century German Hildegard von Bingen, and wants to experience their style of bodily ecstasy.

At 18, Blandine aged out of the foster system and attended an Independence Workshop. After this, she moved into an apartment with three 19-year-old boys, Jack, Todd, and Malik, who also came from foster homes. Unbeknownst to Blandine, two of the boys, average-yet-intuitive Jack and handsome, arrogant Malik are obsessed with her, while quiet Todd, an avid cartoonist, is obsessed with Malik. Malik and Jack’s lust for Blandine takes the form of a competition between them, and they channel this in a series of animal sacrifices in which they force Todd to participate.

Also living in the building is Joan, a fortysomething obituary writer who crosses Blandine’s path in the laundromat and stands out for her solitariness. Joan has attracted the attention and ire of Moses Blitz, the son of recently-deceased former TV star Elsie Blitz, who is in his fifties and is addicted to daubing himself in phosphorescent glowstick liquid. When Joan’s boss forces her to remove Moses’s diatribe against his mother from the obituary comments, Moses decides to leave Los Angeles for Vacca Vale to seek Joan out. When he arrives, he confesses to a priest all the abuses his mother committed against him.

As the nears the time when Blandine exits her body, a few significant events take place. While Blandine accompanies Jack to his dog-walking job to plan an act of sabotage against Maxwell Pinky, one of the authors of the Vacca Vale redevelopment project, she finds she has chemistry with Jack, whom she only ever thought of as her roommate. Although Jack is attracted to Blandine, he intuits that she is using him and arrives home riled up and ready to perform another animal sacrifice. Meanwhile, Blandine is walking in Chastity Valley when she comes across Moses and a goat, whom she calls Hildegard after her favorite mystic. The goat is injured, so Blandine takes her out of the Valley to enlist help.

On the outskirts, she sees James Yager, and he insists on helping her and accompanying her home. She takes the goat home and gives her some food. While James is remorseful that he took advantage of his position in seducing Blandine, she is furious with him and tells him to never come near her again. Meanwhile, her male roommates find the goat, and Jack and Malik try to force Todd to sacrifice her against his will. Blandine tries to save Hildegard, but Jack rips off her clothes, and Todd ends up knifing her in the stomach. Moses intervenes, and Blandine witnesses his phosphorescent glow while she has her out-of-body experience.

A few days later, Joan is taking care of Blandine in the Intensive Care Unit. Joan heard Blandine’s screams but felt unable to intervene and has taken the time off work to visit her. Although Joan cannot express everything she feels, Blandine appreciates the gesture of solidarity and feels optimistic. Meanwhile, the three male roommates have been arrested.