A short novella about about regret and acknowledgement. The narrator, primarily through observation of and friendship with a younger neighbour with learning difficulties, unpacks his life to that point. Through additional conversation with extended family and friends we see that although his approach towards recurring life events may have soften over time, the outcome is always the same.

At the year shifts, in narrative, from 1999 to 2000, there's quiet reflection that, despite fearmongering of Y2K techno-collapse, things, as people, seldom change.

Rabbit by v.campudoni was a very different read for me.

It's a story of family, which basically revolves around a boy and a rabbit, and to a small degree, friends and family. The boy becomes somewhat obsessed with this rabbit, but then again, the boy seems to be slightly strange, as well.

This is a relatively short read, meaning less than an hour or so, depending on how fast or slow you read.


Pub Date: Apr 03 2013


Many thanks for the opportunity to read v.campudoni's 'rabbit'

i just didn't enjoy this one. the writing is quiet and restrained, and for me it felt weirdly flat and emotionally distant. and i just didn't get what the book is exactly about because it's all just vague and meaningless.

also bro wrote: "i'm not saying he was retarded .....that's retarded. and second of all, i hate that word.." like huhhh...????

Man starts unlikable, reflects on life and his many failures, remains unlikable. Perhaps there is a deeper meaning and symbolism in this I am missing but this title isn't for me. The writing is clear and concise and the story moves at a followable pace.

Maybe if I was in the room gbt mood but I did not like the. Characters at all I didn’t like the style or the story. It’s not for me at all.

Not exactly sure how I feel about this one. Might to let this one marinate to develop a fair review.

I have quietly ambivalent feelings on rabbit: I don’t have strong feelings, but the ones I do have are mixed. If I could, I'd give rabbit a 2.5 stars, but I would recommend it (especially to fans of Camus' The Stranger).

I enjoyed the main character as a narrator, but I thought the main character was not a good man. He is not only unpleasant in his head and in his life, but he is also a bad influence. It is clear that his characterization is intentional though, so I did appreciate it. Still, even though he is said to be a middle-aged man, his constant cursing throughout his narration makes him seem quite immature. That could be intentional as well, though I'm not as sure. Nonetheless, the immaturity helps support the takeaway of the book.

I think the man’s narration, cursing aside, is very much like Camus’ The Stranger. They are both detached, blunt, with our MC being a little bit more deranged and having more personality (low bar though). Like The Stranger, the narration is really dry, with simple sentences full of description.

The MC has a penchant for over-explaining, which ironically makes him sound a little stupid, but also makes his relationship to us, the reader, a little bit more complex. We are introduced to him on the terms of almost friendliness, but because of his over-explanations, it seems like he is also patronizing the reader at times (not a complaint, just an observation).

While being a little bit on the over-explaining and cynical side, the narrator is also incredibly blunt and self-aware of both his cynicism and his derangement, which made me laugh out loud at lead 7x. Yet even though I did laugh, everything between those laughs were really boring descriptions where things happen, but nothing happens. The narrator is entertaining enough for it not to be a painful bore, but he doesn’t have enough personality, much less charisma, to make it enjoyable either.

What I did like about the rabbit more than The Stranger was that the main character’s unfeelingness and cynicism didn’t bleed into the characterization of the side characters. Instead, some were so full of emotion and poetic appreciation of the world that it nicely contrasted the main character, in that way revealing the character’s faults (and how much he sticks out). I really appreciate the author's skill in that angle.

rabbit has some really nice poetic sentences in there, but they are few and far between. The ending is similar to The Stranger in the way that it decides at the last 7% to get really deep, as if we didn’t just go through 93% of just “things happening, but not really happening”. However, I think rabbit makes it work better than The Stranger since I believe the takeaway of the rabbit is an insight about its narrator, instead of some simple “no duh” fact about life. Thus, the 93% of “things happening, but not really happening” is actually quite important to understand the ending of the book. Still, that 93% could have been more entertaining.

I’d recommend rabbit to anyone who enjoyed The Stranger, or even enjoyed only the narrative voice of The Stranger. I think The Stranger has more charisma than the rabbit, however, I enjoyed rabbit far more as a piece of work that had something to say.

TW include animal abuse, extramarital affairs, and misogyny.

This was a really bad book. The main character has no redeeming qualities and kept being completely misogynistic throughout the book with no growth. The purpose of the story still remains unclear. The main character complained about everything for no apparent reason and generally did nothing at all to solve his so called problems in life. It was overall just a really boring, directionless read.