Book Review: Rabbits for Food

It’s New Year’s Eve, the holiday of forced fellowship, mandatory fun, and paper hats. While dining out with her husband and their friends, Bunny — an acerbic, mordantly witty, and clinically depressed writer — fully unravels. Her breakdown lands her in the psych ward of a prestigious New York hospital, where she refuses all modes of recommended treatment. Propelled by razor-sharp comic timing and rife with pinpoint insights, Kirshenbaum examines what it means to be unloved and loved, to succeed and fail, to be at once impervious and raw.

I received a digital advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I have struggled with severe depression for years, and Rabbits for Food is such a delightful and amusing approach to dealing with mental illness.  I found this book incredibly relatable.

I felt solidly connected to Bunny as I have felt the way she does multiple times in my life. That hollow feeling she describes is the most true, yet empty thing I have ever felt in my life and I really resonated with her feelings about it. 

Depression can manifest its ugly little self in so many different ways. I am similar to Bunny as I come at mine with humor. I make a “joke” of my depression.. Which doesn’t always make me feel better.. But it makes other people not recognize it as depression.  I really felt for Bunny. It makes it so hard for people to know something is wrong when you work so hard to hide it. 

The Author does such a wonderful job of describing everything. The way Binnie describes the embarrassment, the hollowness, and the deep seeded depression makes me feel that a lot of this book is written on truthful things that might have happened to her. 

The ending creeps up on you and comes out of nowhere. It’s like BAM here is how it all ends. I didn’t want to reach the end of it. I wanted to continue on Bunny’s journey with her. 

Thank you so much to Binnie Krishenbaum, NetGalley, and Serpent’s Tail Books for allowing me to review this title.

Image and Synopsis taken from NetGalley.

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