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Rabbits for Food (Hardback)
  • Rabbits for Food (Hardback)
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Rabbits for Food (Hardback)

(author)
3 Reviews Sign in to write a review
£12.99
Hardback 384 Pages
Published: 14/11/2019
  • 5+ in stock

Usually dispatched within 2-3 working days

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Waterstones Says

Both a riotously funny comic novel that skewers the New York intelligentsia with rapier-sharp prose and a poignant, at times heart-breaking, study of mental illness, Rabbits for Food is Kirshenbaum’s finest novel to date. Littered with memorable characters and deliciously quotable one-liners, this is a wickedly acute novel of modern American life.  

It's New Year's Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun, and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Bunny -an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer-fully unravels.

Her breakdown lands her in the psych ward of a prestigious New York hospital, where she refuses all modes of recommended treatment. Instead, she passes the time chronicling the lives of her fellow "lunatics" and writing a novel about what brought her there.

Her story is a brilliant and brutally funny dive into the disordered mind of a woman who sees the world all too clearly. Propelled by razor-sharp comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw.

Rabbits for Food shows how art can lead us out of-or into-the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief. A bravura literary performance from one of America's finest writers.

Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
ISBN: 9781788164658
Number of pages: 384
Weight: 526 g
Dimensions: 222 x 144 x 34 mm
Edition: Main


MEDIA REVIEWS

'A bitingly funny, and occasionally heartbreaking, look at mental illness, love and relationships, with Kirshenbaum's familiar black humor.' - The New York Times 

'Breaks down the mental breakdown into disquieting bite-sized pieces. It's fast-paced and turbulent, but beautifully complex, and the details are stunning.' - Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout

'Binnie Kirshenbaum is an unflinching teller of truths. She's also sublimely funny. Rabbits for Food shows this immensely gifted writer at the height of her powers.' - Jenny Offill

'Binnie Kirshenbaum has hit her considerable stride in Rabbits for Food. This novel is compulsive reading; it's wonderfully paced, explosively funny and witty, and very, very wise about many grave things--but mostly about merely being human.' - Richard Ford

'Rabbits for Food is a crisp and funny and heartrending account of life with depression, and of life in a psychiatric ward. But at its deepest heart, it's a book about the joy and horror of being yourself. I loved it.' - Jean Hannah Edelstein

'Kirshenbaum's portrait of intractable depression is acerbic, heartbreaking, and improbably hilarious.' - People

'Astounding . . . Readers will quickly commit to this extraordinary novel. Laser-sharp prose, compelling observations, and an engaging, sympathetic central figure conspire to make it a page-turner. Rabbits for Food is an impressive achievement. It should be read as soon as possible.' - Los Angeles Review of Books 

'A joy-giving and hilarious letter from the realm of despair. Also, somehow, a gentle love story. Marvelous and beautiful.' - Rivka Galchen

'Funny, tender and heartbreaking, often in the same line, Rabbits for Food is a remarkable examination of the fault lines that run through us all. Wit and anger jostle for space with constant intelligence and subversiveness.' - Tash Aw

'An intensive character study of a woman on the verge of a breakdown-written with distinctive relentlessness and the compassion that Kirshenbaum has cultivated for all her characters across six previous novels.' - Guernica

'A burst of energy . . . our narrator examines her surroundings-the eccentric patients and doctors, the absurd daily activities, the Kafkaesque system-with a blunt and biting wit.' - BuzzFeed Books

'This book achieves absolute genius . . . [Bunny] is willing to look clearly at the darkness, even if she doesn't ever anticipate light, and that bravery, and her raw humor, makes her magnificent.' - Boston Globe

'Heartbreaking and groundbreaking, a harrowing yet darkly funny chronicle of clinical depression . . . Told in witty, propulsive prose.' - BOMB Magazine

'A remarkable achievement that expertly blends pathos and humor . . . comparisons to One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest are obvious and warranted, but Kirshenbaum's dazzling novel stands on its own as a crushing work of immense heart.' - Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

'Kirshenbaum has excelled at capturing one woman's disturbing mental illness and the daily struggles to cope with survival even in a setting that supposedly offers support and rehabilitation.' - Library Journal

'Kirshenbaum is a remarkable writer of fiercely observed fiction and a bleak, stark wit; her latest novel is as moving as it is funny, and that-truly-is saying something.' - Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review 

'In her first novel in a decade, Kirshenbaum reclaims her scepter as a shrewdly lacerating comedic writer, joining Sylvia Plath, Ken Kesey, Will Self, Ned Vizzini, Siri Hustvedt, and others in writing darkly funny and incisive fiction about life in a psychiatric hospital ward.' - Booklist 

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“Finding light in the dark side of the mind...”

Bunny is named after the rabbits her family raised for food. She is not likeable, she knows that. All her life, she battled with depression and in the New Year’s dinner party, she has a total meltdown and ends up in... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 41

“Darkly Comic & Compulsively Readable”

Binnie Kirshenbaum's novel is acerbic, addictive and incisive.

Following Bunny's demise into deep depression, Kirshenbaum deals with a difficult subject with stylistic wit and dark humour. Bunny's... More

Hardback edition
3 similar books recommended
Helpful? Upvote 18

“A beautiful balance of humour and intelligent sensitivity.”

Bunny is a writer who has spiralled into serious depression and is struggling to cope. After we learn of a series of difficult dinner parties and angry encounters with relatives that have happened over the years,... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 4

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