Ms. Hen reviews Rabbit Cake

Rabbit Cake

Annie Hartnett

Tin House Books

2017

Ms. Hen bought this book at the City Lights Bookstore while she was on vacation in San Francisco, because she thought she should buy a book to support it, and she had heard of this novel, and wanted to read it, but hadn’t gotten around to it. She happened to see it at the bookstore, so she grabbed it.

This novel is about an eleven-year old girl named Elvis, whose mother dies, and she has a hard time handling it. Her mother was a scientist, and highly intelligent, and she didn’t fit into the small Alabama town where the family lived. Elvis thinks her mother’s death might have been a suicide, or she may have had a brain tumor, but there is no evidence. Elvis’ sister, Lizzie, is a sleepwalker like their mother, and she ends up in a psychiatric hospital because Elvis and their father can’t handle her at night when she eats and walks around. Elvis talks to the school guidance councilor to help her with her grieving and her sister's illness.

One thing that Ms. Hen likes about this novel is that it’s full of animals, and animal facts. The mother studied biology. She was working on what the family called “The Book” which was about the sleeping habits of animals. Elvis tries to finish the book after her mother dies. The mother baked rabbit cakes for all occasions, birthdays, the new moon, the solstices. Lizzie becomes obsessed with baking rabbit cakes and wants to hold the Guinness World record for most rabbit cakes ever baked.

One reason Ms. Hen did not like this novel was that she did not think that Elvis is a realistic eleven-year old girl. She seems too mature and sophisticated to be a preteen. Ms. Hen knows there are some children who are intelligent and have a good head on their shoulders, but she knows that most don’t. Ms. Hen has never known a child like this one, and she was not like her. She also thinks that Elvis deals with her mother’s death too easily; if she were a child who lost her mother, she would have been more unstable and she would have lived in fantasies more.

Even though she didn’t think Elvis was realistic, Ms, Hen was happy that there were hens in this novel. Lizzie sleepwalks and ends up in the neighbor’s chicken coop, “I found Lizzie in their chicken coop, the hens huddled in the far corner, squawking in alarm.” Lizzie eats the eggs raw from the chicken coop, which Ms. Hen thinks is disgusting, but Lizzie is not in her right mind. Ms. Hen understands that sleepwalking can be a dangerous thing, and she glad that neither she nor anyone she knows well has that problem.

Ms. Hen thinks that this is not the worst novel she has read, but it’s not the best. If a reader can get past the fact that the protagonist is not quite realistic, then that person would like this novel. It can be charming and cute, but despondent at the same time. Not everything in life is perfect, and Ms. Hen knows this.