Going in to Kate Brody's Rabbit Hole, I thought I knew what to expect because the novel's promotional material describes it as "a sexy debut novel exploring the dark side of true crime fandom and the blurry lines of female friendship..." For sure all of that is there, but for me Rabbit Hole is much more a study of the destructive impact that longterm grief can have on survivors and entire families than it is anything else.
Ten years after the mysterious disappearance of her high-school-senior sister, Teddy Angstrom is still obsessed with finally learning what really happened that night. Angie's disappearance tore a hole in the family fabric that can never be mended now that her father, as a consequence of his own personal grief, has killed himself. Teddy understands that this second family tragedy has largely undermined her mother's ability to cope with life, but still she fails to recognize her own obsession for what it has become, the single thing she can focus on anymore. While attempting to reconstruct her father's final few months, Teddy falls into a deep Reddit rabbit hole filled with true crime fanatics who, when they are not making personal attacks on each other, spout one false lead or new conspiracy theory after the other. Now Teddy doesn't know know what to believe or whom to trust, especially after her internet life and her physical life begin to collide.
Teddy needs a knowledgeable guide, someone to lead her through the dark world she's entered, and she hopes that she's found one in the form of Mickey, a teenaged internet detective as obsessed with Angie's disappearance as Teddy is. But who is Mickey, really, and why does she always seem to have all the answers Teddy needs?
Rabbit Hole is a very good debut novel, and I think its ending is particularly strong because of the insights that Teddy gains concerning her own mind and the fallibility of human memory. Has she been an unreliable narrator from the beginning, or did things happen as she remembers them? Will she ever know for sure? Will we?
 |
| Kate Brody (author photo) |
It's an interesting premise. And I'm now curious about who Mickey really is. Do you get good answers to anything at the end of this one? Because I'm not a huge fan of ambiguous endings.
ReplyDeleteLet's just say that you get a satisfying answer, and that Teddy learned a whole lot more, including about herself, than she bargained for.
DeleteI am certainly rooting for Teddy and hope she finds peace. You have to wonder about the father to compound the tragedy by killing himself. I have read of cases like that in real life with one family member unable to cope but it just makes the situation so much worse.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're right about that, but grief of that degree, I think, drives people to lose their minds and do things completely out of character to their normal behavior. That seems to have happened to the survivors in this family, every one of them.
Delete