RABBIT, RABBIT, RABBIT

An uncanny darkness engulfs a girl obsessed with hatred for her violent father in this debut YA novel.

This deeply resonant tale is one that will linger in the mind long after reading it. Ten-year-old Lily’s alcoholic, rage-filled father, Henry, first came into her life two years ago, showing up at Aunt Ruth’s mountain cabin where the girl; her sister, Rose; and their mother were living. Henry moved them from the forests of British Columbia to a suburb that “hung off the big city of Vancouver like a wart.” If Henry has any love to give, it is submerged in verbal and physical cruelty. Lily and her mother bear the brunt. Quiet, enigmatic Rose, Lily’s only comfort, keeps her head down. “Henry lived in the clench of my jaw and the curl of my fists,” says Lily, the novel’s remarkable first-person narrator. Her mother, consumed by mental illness and an untold sense of guilt—and trailed by an unsettling shadow that only Lily can see—won’t leave Henry. (The tragic past that binds them emerges with maximum, shocking effect over the course of the story.) Lily finds strength in her hatred. Her quest for enough power to get rid of Henry and get Mama back to the healing wildness of the forest leads her to an unsettling book of spells and a bleak path to retribution. Yet the benign influence of her astute aunt, the forest itself, and Calum, the mysterious boy Lily encounters there, offer a lighter path if she chooses to take it. Layers of meaning abound in Dunsmore’s expressive writing in this striking tale: “Summer crept along the landscape, poppies poked out of the ground, and bleeding hearts dripped with blossoms.” The crowd at a racetrack “was a tangle of spicy cologne and skunky armpits, musky horses, and manure so bitter I could taste it.” Caterpillars “wrapped like rings” around Calum’s fingers and “returned as butterflies to sleep in his hands.” How much of what happens is reality, magic, Lily’s imagination, or a mix of all three? Readers can decide.

A girl’s unusual journey to self-realization: disturbing, enchanting, and wise.