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Sign up todayRabbit Cake
Narrator
Katie Schorr
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Length
7 hours 7 minutes
Language
English
Fans of Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go Bernadette and and Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You will delight in Annie Hartnett’s debut, Rabbit Cake, a darkly comic novel about a young girl named Elvis trying to figure out her place in a world without her mother.
Twelve-year-old Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months.
But there are things Elvis doesn’t yet know―like how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning herself while sleep-eating or why her father has started wearing her mother’s silk bathrobe around the house. Elvis investigates the strange circumstances of her mother’s death and finds comfort, if not answers, in the people (and animals) of Freedom, Alabama.
As hilarious a storyteller as she is heartbreakingly honest, Elvis is a truly original voice in this exploration of grief, family, and the endurance of humor after loss.
Annie Hartnett was the 2013–2014 Writer in Residence for the Associates of the Boston Public Library. She has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Alabama, and teaches classes on the short story and the novel at Grub Street, an independent writing center in Boston. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with her husband and their beloved border collie.
Katie Schorr is an actor and writer in New York. Her one-woman show, Take Me. Seriously, ran for six months at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and she performs throughout New York in new works at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and Ars Nova, among other theaters. She has appeared on VH1’s Best Week Ever and costars in the web series Head in the Oven with Saturday Night Live actor Bill Hader. Her audiobook credits include narrating the novels in Alyson Noel’s bestselling Immortals series. Of her work on the series, AudioFile magazine has said, “Narrator Katie Schorr has a wonderfully raspy, youthful voice, which she puts to good effect on the cast of teenage characters.”
Reviews
“Narrator Katie Shore’s youthful voice perfectly portrays Elvis Babbitt…Shore creates a tone of innocence and authenticity. She highlights Elvis’ humor and honesty by using emphasis and a clear timbre. When expressing Elvis’ feelings about her mother’s death, Shore’s words are soft-spoken and childlike… This is a story about family, overcoming loss, and keeping your sense of humor through it all.”
“[A] treasure. Books about grief are rarely funny and adorable―this one is.”
“Funny and heartfelt, Rabbit Cake manages adult questions with a tween’s sense of wonder.”
“Irresistible…[a] quirkily funny coming-of-age tale.”
“Darkly funny and soulful…Rabbit Cake is Elvis’s unpredictable story of healing, and the young woman at its center is immediately lovable because she is delightfully human.”
“Darkly funny and endlessly smart, Rabbit Cake chases down the quivering heart of familial loss and reminds us there is no right way to grieve.”
“Brilliant…The moving and often funny story of a family trying to figure out what to do next now that their touchstone is gone…Charming and beautifully written.”
“Elvis is on my shortlist for the most charming narrator ever and the spunk and depth of her voice make her immediately lovable and memorable. But so, too, are her father, his bird, her older sister, the older sister’s friend who comes to live with them, and Boomer the border collie who didn’t just make the shortlist for best fictive dog ever but is walking away in the sash and tiara right now.”
“Hartnett adeptly conveys a full picture of this family’s emotional turmoil, tinged with the sincere hope of a child and the rising anxiety of an adolescent.”
“A truly terrific and original novel about grief, family, and finding hope in the aftermath.”
“Fantastically original, a story about loss that expands in such exciting, unpredictable ways that I found myself completely won over by the unique Babbitt clan. Hartnett has such a gift for absurdity without ever losing the essential heart of the story. With this novel, she’s become one of my favorite writers.”
“Heartbreak and dark comedy fuse together in this endearing story of family dysfunction and loss.”
“A quirky, slightly magical coming-of-age story that will have your heart.”
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