RABBITS FOR FOOD

By Binnie Kirshenbaum

The first half of “Rabbits for Food,” Binnie Kirshenbaum’s seventh novel, chronicles a breakdown. The second half deals with the resultant stay in a mental hospital. “The Bell Jar” was divided this way too, and the balance is wrong. Plath jettisoned the beguiling wit of her opening chapters for a more crumpled account of what can happen post-breakdown. Philip Roth made a similar mistake in “Portnoy’s Complaint,” retreating from the heights of hilarity into all that Monkey business. (He too involves shrinks.) The problem is, you’re combining two different books. Plath and Roth got away with it, more or less, but it’s a tricky artistic model.

Bunny, a sometime novelist with a penchant for put-downs, a glutinous approach to cats, and a hypersensitivity to the color brown, has settled into severe depression. She traces it back to various deaths (a cat, a friend, a grandfather) and the “six seamless years of immaculate misery” we all face during adolescence. But Bunny is far from experiencing any camaraderie of common suffering. Her depression folds her inward and keeps everyone at bay. She’s convinced people don’t like her. Some do fear her; some fear for her; others just dread her causing a scene. Her zoologist husband, Albie, is patient and loyal as can be — while seeing an undemanding Englishwoman on the side.

[ This book was one of our most anticipated titles of May. See the full list. ]

Bunny cries a lot and can hardly eat, sleep or articulate a need. (Except for cigarettes. She must be one of the last smokers in New York.) She doesn’t shower or change her underwear. She forgets to drink her coffee. Her favorite foods taste rotten. Her current cat annoys her. She has to lie about voting for Obama in 2008, since she couldn’t get out of bed. She still manages to make it to the “loo,” though, as Albie’s girlfriend cattily points out.

While telling herself she’s not suicidal, Bunny eventually indulges in a symbolic self-obliteration, destroying documents attesting to her existence and identity: passport, bank statements, family photos. And it is an indulgence, a greedy bid for power. She’s not someone who should ever be let loose near a shredder.