Rabbit Cake

Rabbit Cake

Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months. But there are things Elvis doesn’t yet know—like how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning herself while sleep-eating or why her father has started wearing her mother's silk bathrobe around the house. Elvis investigates the strange circumstances of her mother's death and finds comfort, if not answers, in the people (and animals) of Freedom, Alabama. As hilarious a storyteller as she is heartbreakingly honest, Elvis is a truly original voice in this exploration of grief, family, and the endurance of humor after loss.  Rabbit cake, made with a special aluminum mold, was for special occasions in the Babbitt family. Looking back, Elvis thinks that the first sign of danger was when her mother burned the ears of the rabbit cake meant to celebrate Elvis's 10th birthday. Six months later, Elvis's mother drowns, ostensibly by sleepwalking into the river. The scientifically minded protagonist investigates her mother's death, making sense of the taxonomy of death and grief with curiosity and wry humor. Her guileless observations are often hilarious: hints of her mother's promiscuity emerge, pieced together from a memory of her mother "pretending to milk" a man and the mystery of a parrot that perfectly imitates her mother's voice. Meanwhile, Elvis's father begins wearing his dead wife's makeup, and Elvis's 16-year-old sister Lizzie's sleepwalking grows ever more dangerous. When a sleeping Lizzie is discovered climbing into a hot oven, their desperate father sends her to a mental institution. Elvis's salvation comes through volunteer work at a local animal sanctuary. While she is an accurate, observant narrator, with an abundance of knowledge about the natural world, she has little success in understanding people; she puzzles over psychology texts and consults a telephone psychic. Hartnett adeptly conveys a full picture of this family's emotional turmoil, tinged with the sincere hope of a child and the rising anxiety of an adolescent. VERDICT Teens who enjoyed the engaging voice of 11-year-old Flavia in Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie will love Elvis Babbitt.—Diane Colson, City College, Gainesville, FL "[A] treasure. Books about grief are rarely funny and adorable—this one is."— People Magazine "A brilliant book . . . How a whip-smart young girl handles the loss of her mother and the reorientation of her family; charming and beautifully written." — Kirkus, Starred Review "In Hartnett’s winning debut, a memorable young narrator’s desire for rationality wrestles with her grief. . . . Affecting."— Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "For your canon-coming-of-age-novel consideration: Meet Elvis Babbitt. A preteen whose mother recently drowned, Elvis is trying to understand the world around her. Funny and heartfelt, Rabbit Cake manages adult questions with a tween's sense of wonder." — Marie Claire "This is a truly terrific and original novel about grief, family, and finding hope in the aftermath." — Booklist "Darkly funny and soulful . . . Hartnett imbues Elvis with that capacity to be both self-aware and childlike that places her in a tradition of independent minded, motherless heroines — from Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird , to the eponymous Ellen Foster , and Ruth from Housekeeping . . . . Rabbit Cake is Elvis’s unpredictable story of healing, and the young woman at its center is immediately lovable because she is delightfully human." — The Boston Globe "Hartnett tells the story with immeasurable heart, wit, and charm. The book’s got perfect pitch from open to close."— The Chicago Review of Books , Best Books of the Year "Irresistible...[the book is] both gentle exploration of loss (Elvis’s mother, in the opening pages, has drowned) and quirkily funny coming-of-age tale, marking its Rhode Island-based author as a talent to watch." — The Seattle Times "Elvis should be in contention for best narrator of the year; her voice feels like a mix of Scout Finch and Harriet the Spy, pushed to the edge by loneliness."— Minnesota Public Radio, #1 Fiction Pick of the Year "This is the kind of book I try to resist as a noted curmudgeon, but with not a smidge more sentiment than needed, Rabbit Cake is an instant classic that you could confidently give as a gift to any reader." — Jeff Vandermeer "In my mind, it's damn near impossible to overstate the joys, the subtlety, and the brilliance of Rabbit Cake . "— Gabriel Tallent, New York Times bestselling author of MY ABSOLUTE DARLING Hartnett has written a quirky, slightly magical coming-of-age story that will have your heart . She is a writer to watch. —Heidi Durrow, New York Times bestsell