Rabbits by Terry Miles

I didn’t particularly enjoy this book. It was frustrating and, though inspired by an interesting idea and a podcast, felt like a table of appetizers when you’ve paid for a main course.

“What is Rabbits”. “Do you know what Rabbits is”. “You’re not supposed to talk about Rabbits”.

Like a drunken mashup of the Matrix and Fight Club these three sentences represent the first 350 pages of this 400 page book. These are repeated over and over again as our protagonist K meets someone, exchanges this dialogue, falls asleep and then wakes up wondering where he is. There’s an interesting moment in the acknowledgments where the author said his editor cut the book down from 1000 pages which makes me wonder why more time was not devoted to the ending or a decent explanation for the events of the book. I can only assume that there is stuff that he discusses in his podcast that adds to the story or it’s something he just loves to talk about and suppose amount and mull over without ever actually choosing an endgame. During the final 30 pages the answers to the first questions are somewhat explored but not to the point of an “Aha!” moment and this really annoyed me. The characters are decent and the writing easy to digest but overall I cannot recommend this book. It might be a game but it’s one that isn’t very fun.

2/5