Used, good condition
385 pages
First published: 2024
REVIEWS:
- A brilliant, dark debut about grief and the way in which the internet can magnify mania - Mail on Sunday
- I fell down Rabbit Hole in an obsessive spiral - Kate Reed Petty
- A twisty, pacy crime thriller - independent.co.uk
- A mindblowing debut - Heather Darwent
- A gritty tale of grief, family secrets and addiction - Observer
- A deliciously dark and twisted debut about family secrets, true crime, and destructive obsession by a striking new talent. - Jonathan Ball Publishers
- Though the story centers around true crime culture, Rabbit Hole is also a nod to the way we interact through social media on a broader level and how we behave through anonymity. Its easier to be cruel, vulgar, and careless with our words when we can hide behind a random user name. We can believe that our opinions matter. We can soak in some schadenfreude, then go back to our lives with little awareness of how our behavior has affected another person, a person who could be experiencing agony we know nothing about.
Brody skillfully creates a unique, memorable case study of familial love and grief and examines how seeking truth and closure can turn ugly. A psychological thriller that also thoughtfully explores social media culture and the dangers of obsession, Rabbit Hole is a heart-wrenching reminder of the complex humanity behind every true crime story. - Chigago Review of Books
- Kate Brody's debut novel, Rabbit Hole, is an unflinching exploration of grief, family and true crime, which will have you gripped in a chokehold until the final page.
From the novels exposition, we learn that her father has committed suicide on the tenth-year anniversary of her sister Angies disappearance. In the aftermath of her fathers death, Teddy uncovers the troubling digital footprint he has left behind. After discovering her fathers obsessive presence on Reddit threads that discuss Angies disappearance, she takes it upon herself to keep digging into her sisters case. Burrowing deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole of the online true crime community, she meets Mickey, a 19-year-old girl, with whom Teddy soon shares a toxic co-dependent relationship. Before long, Teddys job as an English teacher, her love life, and her sanity become threatened by her obsession with finding out what happened to Angie.
Fundamentally, Rabbit Hole is a novel about griefspecifically, what can happen if you let grief consume you entirely. The first person perspective immerses us in Teddys grief, and we watch how her sorrow seeps into every pore of her life. While this certainly makes for a claustrophobic read at times, the story resonated with me on a level I did not expect. The melancholy inherent in losing someone, and of being stripped of the opportunity to meet the person they will become, is a universal experience we can perhaps all relate to. While Teddy clings to Mickey as she represents a simulacrum of Angie when she went missing, a defining (and utterly heart-breaking) moment in the book manifests when Teddy realizes that Mickey will develop and grow in ways that Angie cannot. Brody masterfully conveys the void left by a persons death or disappearance on those who loved them, and the lengths they will go to fill it.
Rabbit Hole plays with many of the themes permeating contemporary literary fiction through its exploration of obsession, true crime, and the way it employs the trope of the messy female narrator. Yet it is unlike anything I have read. Its deeply emotivethe grief within the pages is almost tangibleand disturbing in the way it illuminates the darkest recesses of the Internet. Despite the heavy subject matter, Brody manages to create a narrative which is affirming; while the novel begins with death, it ends with the potential for growth. In candidly depicting the raw, animalistic pain of grief, Brody actually conveys just how important it is to live. - Issy Stephenson
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Teddy Angstrom is no stranger to morbid public interest in her family's tragedies. And when her father dies suddenly, ten years to the day after her sister Angie's disappearance, she intends to maintain as much privacy as she always has. Clearing out her father's office, however, Teddy discovers her father's double life: a decade-long investigation into wild conspiracies from a Reddit community of true crime fans fixated on Angie.
Repelled and compelled in equal measure by this new online dimension, Teddy finds herself falling down that same rabbit hole. So when nineteen-year-old Mickey, a charming amateur internet sleuth, materialises in real life, Teddy determines that the two of them are going to team up to find out what really happened to Angie - and whether there's any chance she might still be alive. But as she struggles to reconcile new information with old memories, Teddy doesn't notice that her obsession is making her increasingly self-destructive.
And she's in way over her head before she realises that Mickey, too, is not all she seems.
Noirish, haunting and razor-sharp, as compulsive as a late-night Reddit binge, Rabbit Hole is an unforgettable debut about violence, family and grief.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Kate Brody lives in Los Angeles, California. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Lit Hub, CrimeReads, Electric Lit, The Rumpus, and The Literary Review, among other publications. She holds an MFA from NYU. Rabbit Hole is her debut.
