Indies Introduce

Fiction

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  Rabbit Cake, Annie Hartnett
  Tin House, 9781941040560, March 7, 2017 (Fiction)
  

  Rabbit Cake details the grief observed, explained, suffered, and experienced by a 12-year-old girl from a memorably zany family. Elvis Babbitt is a precocious child who copes with her sleepwalking mother until her death. Afterwards, Elvis finds solace in her dog, Boomer, her dad’s parrot, and her crazy sister. But she struggles to explain her mother’s death (‘I didn’t believe Mom could be gone completely when there was so much of her left everywhere…’) and finally visits her school psychologist, who helps her chart out her 18 months of grief — an achievable goal for a young woman with a scientific bent. What an unusual collection of characters in this very touching coming-of-age story.

  Darwin Ellis, Books on the Common (Ridgefield, CT)
  
  

  The voice of 12-year-old Elvis Babbitt is unforgettable — funny, smart, surprising, heartbreaking. Hartnett’s profound understanding of the power and influence of the mother-daughter relationship, even if the mother is physically or emotionally absent, brought to mind the brilliant novelist Mona Simpson.

  Susan Hans O’Connor, Penguin Bookshop (Sewickley, PA)
  

  Rabbit Cake is the most enjoyable novel I’ve read since Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore!

  Pete Mock, McIntyre’s Books (Pittsboro, NC)