LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Incredibly compulsive, Hugo Rifkind’s Rabbits is a menacingly funny story of dark secrets, coming-of-age faltering, and the dirty seduction of being sucked into elite circles, in this case a middle-class boy sliding into Scottish aristocracy. Also shot-through with the mystery of a death and its protagonist’s personal loss and dislocation, Rabbits is a droll, bold, disturbing dynamo of a book.
Thanks to his father’s success as a writer whose novels have found big success on the small screen, Tommo is thrust into life as a middle-class fish-out-of-water in an elite Scottish boarding school. Playing out against a 1990s backdrop and soundtrack, Tommo is initially seduced by this weird new world of crumbling castles, shooting estates, murky lochs and decadent social events, but quick to pick up on dark undercurrents, not least when it comes to secrets around the death of his friend’s brother.
Brilliantly, darkly funny, Rabbits is also poignant and profound, with a consummately compelling narrative voice. On that note, I’ll leave the last words to Tommo: “You can’t cling onto things that are crumbling. Because you will break your nails, and you will fall, and then you will look back up and wonder how it can be that something which once seemed as solid as stone itself is now barely there at all.”
Joanne Owen
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Rabbits Synopsis
Tommo has just moved to a prestigious boarding school. A product of the middle class, and with new-found independence thrust upon him, he finds himself invited into fading crumbling country houses.
It’s the early nineties and the elite he is now surrounded by is struggling for relevance. Alienated from the mainstream, and running low on inherited wealth, his peers have retreated into snobbery and fatalism. Initially awed by their poise and seduced by their hedonism, Tommo gradually becomes aware of sinister undercurrents and a suppressed rage that threatens to explode into violence.
In this world, half-remembered traditions mix with decadence and an awful lot of small dead animals. And sometimes, not just animals. When Tommo’s friend Johnnie’s brother is found dead, a shotgun at his feet, he realises there are secrets that everyone knows, but no one speaks about, or even acknowledges. And those secrets can no longer be hidden.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781846976704 |
| Publication date: |
6th June 2024 |
| Author: |
Hugo Rifkind |
| Publisher: |
Birlinn General |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Pagination: |
320 pages |
| Primary Genre |
General Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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| Recommendations: |
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Press Reviews
Hugo Rifkind Press Reviews
'Rabbits is an instantly compelling novel; it is simultaneously poignant, peculiar, tragic, and very, very funny. Highly recommended' -- Sathnam Sanghera
'A remarkable achievement, a novel that so well encapsulates the slightly feral condition of teenage boys tasting independence for the first time ... recreates a world unknown to most readers, like Saltburn, rather creepily repellent, but with all its fascination to the outsider' -- Linda Grant, Booker Shortlisted author of The Clothes on Their Backs
'The best 2 a.m.-whisky story of madly evocative nineties' youth: parties in crumbling houses, and a sense of time running out. This book is fabulous company – you’ll cancel your own parties to get to the end. A queasy, hilarious joy' -- Caitlin Moran
'The leap from journalism to fiction is not always an easy one, but in Rifkind's case, my only frustration is that he took so long to take the leap. A darkly funny, often disturbing, hugely entertaining story that sneaks around behind the crumbling facades of wealth and masculinity to smoke a joint and shoot some shit' -- Tim Minchin
'Rabbits pulls you in and doesn't let go. A dazzling, compelling novel' -- John Niven, author of Kill Your Friends
'Darkly funny as Saltburn, but with kilts' -- Val McDermid
Author
About Hugo Rifkind
Hugo Rifkind is a columnist, critic and leader writer for The Times and a presenter on Times Radio, having formerly been a columnist for the Spectator, GQ and the Herald. He is a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4’s comedy show The News Quiz, and an occasional guest on television shows that aren’t supposed to be funny at all. He was born and raised in Edinburgh, studied in Cambridge, and now lives in North London in a house where everybody else speaks German, including the dog.
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