Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

8 reviews

fpcat99's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25


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ameliasbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

This is a tough one to review. The author throws everything at you that is on her mind and you have to deal with it. Some parts leave you breathless and others weirdly are a bit of a slog.

The writing is strong most of the time, but the story can't keep up with it. Too many side characters, whose stories don't get really elaborated and I could have really done without this totally uninteresting son of a celebrity mother.
 
I'm rating this a bit higher, because of the strong writing. The story gave me sadness and loneliness (which I'm totally here for), but apart from that, there wasn't enough meat to the bone for me.

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lebouefcasey's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75


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dustghosts's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I love the experimentation that Gunther is doing here— with POV, with time, with narration. What a beautiful and effective way to present a fragmented, obfuscated yet encompassing understanding of events and of the girl at the center of them. The content itself I found challenging, and the pacing a bit slow— I wonder if I ought to have read this with eyes instead of ears, and if that would have helped. Wonderful work by the audiobook readers; it just took me a very long time to get through!! 

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cstein's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

In this ambitious and then painfully pointed examination of contemporary struggle, Gunty employs a unique narrative style and extensive knowledge of her spiritual and philosophical forebears to great effect. The late, Dostoevsky-esque monologue chapter was the novel's highlight and a pleasure to parse through. Gunty has a keen eye for phenomena one passively observes but never articulates. However, when it finally arrived, the scene anticipated from page one felt underexamined.

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theflowergarden's review against another edition

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slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.25


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danaaliyalevinson's review

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I wanted to like this one. It won the National Book Award. And the first 100 pages I was like, this is genius. And then it was all downhill from there. It's about a group of people all living in the same housing project as they each play a part in a violent event. I thought it got lost in its own too clever by half structure, and then the characters wound up being so underdeveloped that I felt nothing as it hurtled toward the conclusion I saw coming from a mile away. Then there's also this thing I see with a lot of modern fiction writers where it feels like literary fiction by way of Wes Anderson. It's very en vogue. And sometimes it works. But here, I thought it was so wrapped up in its need to be quirky and idiosyncratic that I lost the heart.

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morecrocs's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0


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