Book Club Guide

The Rabbit Hutch

by Tess Gunty · 2022 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

The Rust Belt apartment complex as a portrait of American precarity
Blandine's medieval mysticism as escape from an ordinary, damaged life
A single night that several lives converge toward — and what it reveals

About this book

In a crumbling apartment complex in a Rust Belt city, a group of residents — including eighteen-year-old Blandine, fresh out of the foster care system and obsessed with medieval mystics — converge toward a single shocking night. Gunty's National Book Award-winning debut is a portrait of American decline rendered with formal inventiveness and unexpected tenderness.

Published in 2022, The Rabbit Hutch was Gunty's debut novel and won the National Book Award for Fiction. She set it in a fictionalised version of South Bend, Indiana, where she grew up.

Discussion questions

The novel follows multiple residents of a single apartment building. How does Gunty develop this ensemble — and what does the building itself represent?
Blandine is obsessed with medieval Christian mystics — women who starved themselves toward transcendence. How does Gunty use this obsession — as escape, as genuine spiritual yearning, or as something the novel treats with ambivalence?
The novel is formally inventive — including emails, internet comments and other documentary forms. What does this variety achieve?
Blandine aged out of the foster care system, and her vulnerability runs through the novel. How does Gunty develop this — without either sentimentalising or sensationalising her situation?
The Rabbit Hutch won the National Book Award — a notable debut. What does it do that earns this recognition — and what does it capture about contemporary American decline that other novels miss?