Vacca Vale is a fictitious Indiana city that was once a
thriving industrial metropolis. Now it
is dying, and developers plan to demolish a sizeable greenspace. The title of the book refers to an affordable
housing apartment complex in which most of the characters reside. There are rabbits in the story as well, not
to mention in the somewhat disturbing epigraph.
Blandine is an exceptionally bright and beautiful young woman who has
aged out of the foster system, as have her three male teenaged roommates whose
moral compasses are seriously skewed. Blandine’s
personal mission is to stop the developers by peppering them with voodoo dolls
and whatnot. One oddball character who
sweeps in from California is the son of a famous but now deceased actress. He likes to paint his almost naked body with the
liquid from glow sticks and then barge into the home of someone with whom he
has a bone to pick. At first, I found
the storyline depressing and not exactly cohesive, but then I laughed out loud occasionally. Overall, though, I would say that this book
is a bit dark—about a depressed city and its unfortunate denizens. In a long and seemingly unrelated section of
the book, gifted high school student Tiffany becomes romantically involved with
a 42-year-old married teacher. Her
connection to the Rabbit Hutch comes not so much as a surprise as a
confirmation of what the author has led us to suspect. Here’s my favorite passage from that section:
“It’s clear to her that he would be happier in a coastal city. It’s clear to him that she would be happier in a different species.”
I hope that species is not rabbits.