Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items

RABBITS FOR FOOD

Binnie Kirshenbaum

This is a novel about a woman in pain who manages to make us laugh and cry.

Bunny, a hilarious yet depressed, black-clothed New Yorker carries readers through this tragically comic book. The novel begins on a New Years Eve that ends with Bunny being admitted to a psychiatric hospital. There she waits for visits from a therapy dog who doesn't come, engages with or observes other "crazies," decides whether or not to try ECT, and writes personal essays illuminating her family history.

Bunny is cynical, astute, disordered, and funny - very funny. Not always sympathetic, but heartbreaking and engaging Bunny takes us and her husband Albie on a deep dive into the heart and mind of a seriously depressed woman.

Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of six novels and one short story collection. She has twice won the Critic's Choice Award and the Discovery Award. She was one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists and one of Paper magazine's Beautiful People. She is a professor and Fiction Director at Columbia University Graduate School of the Arts.

". . . . a novelist who gracefully defies classification" (Richard Ford)

Available products
Book Published 2019-05-19 by Soho Press
Book Published 2019-05-19 by Soho Press

Comments

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.

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

»Every now and then you're lucky enough to read a book that declares its own authority in a straightforward and unapologetic way. RABBITS FOR FOOD is that kind of book - haunted, astringent, and grimly funny, it explores without a grain of sentimentality or exaggeration the sort of crisis that any of us might fall prey to. In her 'unlikeable' protagonist, Binnie Kirshenbaum has created a hero for our time: articulate but misunderstood, loved but lonely, unsuccessful but not a failure, sophisticated to the point of jadedness, and on the verge of a devastating breakdown. Prepare to recognize yourself in both the petty details of her life and the profound distortions of her thinking.«

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.

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.

»RABBITS FOR FOOD is startling and fascinating. Binnie Kirshenbaum's complex and insightful novel looks seriously, and ironically, at the life of a clinically depressed woman, and her commitment in a 'psycho ward.' Kirshenbaum might have written this with a blade, her wit is that sharp and deep. Cutting to the bone, Kirshenbaum allows no sentimentality in this bracing novel. RABBITS FOR FOOD is stark in its descriptions, beautifully written, weirdly funny, and engrossing. I was riveted.«

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.

»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.«

»Psychiatric dayroom dark and just as funny, RABBITS FOR FOOD breaks down the mental breakdown into disquieting bite-sized pieces. It's fast-paced and turbulent, but beautifully complex, and the details are stunning. So chew slowly - this is one you'll want to savor.«

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

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.

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

»Kirshenbaum's portrait of intractable depression is acerbic, heartbreaking and improbably hilarious.«

A simple plot descriptiondepressed woman checks herself into a psych ward, refuses to take the prescribed meds and starts writing about her fellow inmatesdoesn't do justice to this marvelous novel, because it leaves out everything that makes it so special. The writing is splendid; against all odds it's frequently explosively funny, and it offers readers a memorable picture of an often wittily acerbic woman trying to find herself in the gray fog of sadness. Oh, and there's a cat named Jeffrey and a therapy dog who never shows up, as well.

»Brilliant insight and gleaming prose light up this report from the darkest interior, where Binnie Kirshenbaum's acerbic, grieving, all-too clear-sighted protagonist has become imprisoned by despair. Enduring love is no match here for irremediable loss, but Kirshenbaum conducts us on the journey with steady authorial nerves, high-wire insouciance, quicksilver wit, and limitless compassion.«