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A wise and moving story about a family navigating grief, hope, and healing through a bond with a new pet rabbit.
Big-hearted and moving, Melanie Cheng's The Burrow brings together a family trying to find their way forward in the wake of a devastating loss. Parents Jin and Amy Lee adopt a rabbit for their daughter Lucie in the hopes of restoring a bit of joy to their home in the Australian suburbs, and at first, each family member benefits from the distraction of a new creature in need of care. Things are upended when the arrival of Amy's estranged mother breaks their fragile sense of peace, and the family is forced to confront the terrible circumstances surrounding their tragedy and to ask themselves whether opening their hearts to the rabbit will help them to heal, or only invite further sorrow.
With compassion and a keen eye for detail, Cheng tenderly reveals the lives of others―even a small rabbit―in an unforgettable novel about grief, hope, and forgiveness.
"Through restrained and subtle writing that never reveals too much, this novel entices readers to recognize grief's paradoxically discreet nature." ―Booklist
"The Burrow is a beautiful book. Like the grief at its heart, it is restrained and multifaceted. It shows a family existing in isolated parts, struggling to connect, and it explores the moments that bring them together. Each voice is unique and thoroughly engaging. I couldn't put it down." ―Pip Williams, author of The Dictionary of Lost Words
"A small pet rabbit takes on greater meaning in this tight, elegant story of a family quartet reckoning with grief. Melanie Cheng captures the claustrophobic, revelatory strangeness of the early days of the Covid lockdown while bravely mining complexities of human emotion―fear, guilt, anger, and love―in lovely, lucid prose that glitters throughout with cut stones of wisdom." ―Lauren Acampora, author of The Paper Wasp
"Gulped it. I've been a Melanie Cheng fan since our first books came out. But this one is next level―it conveys so much human experience so sparingly that it seems to defy the laws of gravity. Stunning." ―Sarah Krasnostein, author of The Trauma Cleaner and The Believer
This information about The Burrow was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Melanie Cheng is an award-winning author and doctor based in Melbourne, Australia. Her writing has been published in the Guardian, The Age, The Saturday Paper, and The Big Issue, among many others.
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