The Rabbits

From the winner of the Penguin Literary Prize. How do you make sense of the loss of those you love most? Delia Rabbit has asked herself this question over and over again since the disappearance of her older sister, Bo. Crippled by grief, Delia and her mother became dysfunctional, parting ways not long after Delia turned eighteen. Now an art teacher at a Queensland college, Delia has managed to build a new life for herself and to create a family of her own. Only more and more that life is slipping: her partner, Ed, has gone, her daughter, Olive, is distancing herself, and, all of a sudden, in the middle of a blinding heatwave, her sixteen-year-old son, Charlie, disappears too. Suddenly what was buried feels close to the surface, and the Rabbits are faced not only with each other, but also with themselves. The Rabbits is a multigenerational family story with a dose of magical realism. It is about family secrets, art, very mild superpowers, loneliness and the strange connections we make in the places we least expect The disappearance of Bo Rabbit in 1984 left the Rabbit women crippled by grief. Bos mother, Rosemary, and Bos younger sister, Delia, became disjointed and dysfunctional, parting ways not long after Delia turned eighteen. Now a teacher at a Queensland college, Delias life is dissolving. She gave up on her own art, began a relationship with a student, and is struggling to raise her three growing children, Olive, Charlie and Benjamin. And now she must also care for her mother. Despite it all, the Rabbits are managing, precariously. Or, they were until sixteen-year-old Charlie Rabbit disappears in the middle of a blinding heatwave. The family reels from the loss, and struggles to cope as the childrens estranged father, Ed, re-enters their lives. Only nothing is quite as it seems, and Charlies disappearance soon proves to be just that a disappearance, or, rather, an unexpected bout of invisibility hes unable to reverse. The Rabbits is a multigenerational family story with a dose of magical realism. It is about family secrets, art, very mild superpowers, loneliness and the strange connections we make in the places we least expect.