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. [A] treasure. Books about grief are rarely funny and adorable-this one is.-People Magazine
A brilliant book . . . How a whip-smart young girl handles the loss of her mother and the reorientation of her family; charming and beautifully written.
-Kirkus, Starred Review
In Hartnett's winning debut, a memorable young narrator's desire for rationality wrestles with her grief. . . . Affecting.-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
For your canon-coming-of-age-novel consideration: Meet Elvis Babbitt. A preteen whose mother recently drowned, Elvis is trying to understand the world around her. Funny and heartfelt, Rabbit Cake manages adult questions with a tween's sense of wonder.
-Marie Claire
This is a truly terrific and original novel about grief, family, and finding hope in the aftermath.
-Booklist
Darkly funny and soulful . . . Hartnett imbues Elvis with that capacity to be both self-aware and childlike that places her in a tradition of independent minded, motherless heroines - from Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, to the eponymous Ellen Foster, and Ruth from Housekeeping. . . . Rabbit Cake is Elvis's unpredictable story of healing, and the young woman at its center is immediately lovable because she is delightfully human.
-The Boston Globe
Hartnett tells the story with immeasurable heart, wit, and charm. The book's got perfect pitch from open to close.-The Chicago Review of Books, Best Books of the Year
Irresistible...[the book is] both gentle exploration of loss (Elvis's mother, in the opening pages, has drowned) and quirkily funny coming-of-age tale, marking its Rhode Island-based author as a talent to watch.
-The Seattle Times
Elvis should be in contention for best narrator of
the year; her voice feels like a mix of Scout Finch and Harriet the Spy, pushed
to the edge by loneliness.-Minnesota Public Radio, #1 Fiction Pick of 2017
This is the kind of book I try to resist as a noted curmudgeon, but with not a smidge more sentiment than needed, Rabbit Cake is an instant classic that you could confidently give as a gift to any reader.
-Jeff Vandermeer, author of BORNE
In my mind, it's damn near impossible to overstate the joys, the subtlety, and the brilliance of Rabbit Cake.
-Gabriel Tallent, New York Times bestselling author of MY ABSOLUTE DARLING
Hartnett has written a quirky, slightly magical coming-of-age story that will have your heart. She is a writer to watch.
-Heidi Durrow, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky
Heartbreak and dark comedy fuse together in this endearing story of family dysfunction and loss. I cheered for young Elvis Babbitt and the entire cast of quirky characters as they stumbled along a twisted path toward healing.
-Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and Looking for Me
Annie Hartnett's Rabbit Cake is 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
