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Staff Pick
You know that inner voice that knows and calls out your every flaw? Binnie Kirshenbaum must walk through the world that way. Luckily for the world, she’s so hilarious that we welcome the shock and the sting of her observations. Recommended By Keith M., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A heartbreaking, irreverent, laugh-out-loud funny meditation on what it's like to lose your mind from critically acclaimed novelist Binnie Kirshenbaum
Bunny, a middle-aged writer in New York, is admitted to a psychiatric ward after a breakdown on New Year's Eve. There she engages with or observes the other "crazies," awaits ECT, and writes personal essays illuminating her family history. Bunny is cynical, astute, disordered, and funny — very funny. Not always sympathetic, the heartbreaking and engaging Bunny takes us (and her husband, Albie) on a deep dive in to the heart and mind of a seriously depressed woman.
Rabbits for Food, Binnie Kirshenbaum's first novel in a decade, is a bravura performance, a story about marriage, memory, pets, friendship, families falling apart, and profound loneliness. It is laugh-out-loud funny and fearless. As ruthlessly witty as she vulnerable, Bunny is an unforgettable guide to the dark elements in all of our psyches.
Review
“Brilliant insight and gleaming prose light up this report from the darkest interior, where Binnie Kirshenbaum’s acerbic, grieving, all-too clear-sighted protagonist has become imprisoned by despair. Enduring love is no match here for irremediable loss, but Kirshenbaum conducts us on the journey with steady authorial nerves, high-wire insouciance, quicksilver wit, and limitless compassion.” Deborah Eisenberg, author of Your Duck Is My Duck
Review
“Binnie Kirshenbaum has hit her considerable stride in Rabbits for Food. This novel is compulsive reading; it’s wonderfully paced, explosively funny and witty, and very, very wise about many grave things — but mostly about merely being human.” Richard Ford
Review
“Psychiatric dayroom dark and just as funny, Rabbits for Food breaks down the mental breakdown into disquieting bite-sized pieces. It’s fast-paced and turbulent, but beautifully complex, and the details are stunning. So chew slowly — this is one you’ll want to savor.” Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout
Review
“A bitingly funny, and occasionally heartbreaking, look at mental illness, love and relationships, with Kirshenbaum’s familiar black humor.” The New York Times
Synopsis
Master of razor-edged literary humor Binnie Kirshenbaum returns with her first novel in a decade, a devastating, laugh-out-loud funny story of a writer's slide into depression and institutionalization. It's New Year's Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun, and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Kirshenbaum's protagonist--an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer--fully unravels. Her breakdown lands her in the psych ward of a prestigious New York hospital, where she refuses all modes of recommended treatment. Instead, she passes the time chronicling the lives of her fellow "lunatics" and writing a novel about what brought her there. Her story is a brilliant and brutally funny dive into the disordered mind of a woman who sees the world all too clearly.
Propelled by razor-sharp comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw. Rabbits for Food shows how art can lead us out of--or into--the depths of disconsolate loneliness and piercing grief. A bravura literary performance from one of our most indispensable writers.
About the Author
Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of the story collection History on a Personal Note and six novels, including On Mermaid Avenue, Hester Among the Ruins, An Almost Perfect Moment, and The Scenic Route. Her novels have been chosen as Notable Books of the Year by The Chicago Tribune, NPR, TIME, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post. Her work has been translated into seven languages.