Rabbit (Short Story Review)

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Prelude:
Now before I delve into my review of the short story Rabbit that was published in the October issue of Prairie Fire I feel that I must touch base on what drew me to this story, it was the title. On Thursday I was  privledged to sit on the panel of my fellow classmate Robert Zirk's college radio show, Did You Just Make That Up. It could be compared to a radio version of Whose Line Is It Anyway. Fellow comedic classmates Dylan Hughes, Chuka Ejeckam, and Brea Perrelli along with myself ended up entangled in a improv skit about killer rabbits; I have not been able to fight off these images since. Aside from that my favorite pet ever was a rabbit named Twitch I had for 13 years which being a Netherland Dwarf had a life expectacy of only 6 years. I was also  born in the year of the rabbit. Now enough about and on to my review.

About the Author:
Rabbit was written by Theodora Armstrong, a fiction writer and poet who lives in Vancouver. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines such as Prairie Fire, Grain, The Fiddlehead, Descant, The New Quarterly and CV2. She has won a Western Magazine Award and holds a MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and is currently at work on her first novel.

The Review:
Rabbit is told through the eyes of a nine year old girl named Dawn. Dawn lives with her single mother who works in the city. It is never mentioned what has become of her father, she has a brother who just turned 18. He is very self absorbed and has spent more time living abroad with other relatives than he has with his mom and sister. He has been back for nearly a year. The story opens up after the abduction of a young teenage girl has taken place. Dawn is hiding in the curtains watching her mom stand outside in the first snow fall talking to the man from next door. The street is a buzz with police cars and consoling, gossiping neighbours.

"My mom's breath is like a beautiful bubblegum balloon, so thin. It keeps reaching out, almost touching the neighbour, and then it disappears."

Above is just a sample of the great poetric description that Armstrong has emerge from the mind of a nine year old. You fall in love with Dawn instantly as she decribes so many different things such as watching her mom remove her pantyhose which can be a completely different experience depending on the weather outside or when she is spying on her 18 year old brother recieving oral sex from a 13 year girl who had just graduated her elementary school the year prior. This alone, that her brother Matt has been seen with this girl, has their mother upset, people talking, and the girl's father outraged.

The first time the word Rabbit is mentioned is when Dawn is submerged in the tub listening to her mother and brother arguing. She compares her tummy that has become red from the heat of the water to that of the skin as a rabbit followed by them being too squishy. It is mentioned again near the end of the story after her brother runs away from home. She is laying in the snow of her backyard where it meets the forest. She recalls a day where she spyed on her brother  as he shot his.22 rifle at soup cans and missed  nearly every time.
"I wish my brother would take me rabbit hunting, that way we could have rabbit stew for supper instead of soup."

You learn in this story that soup is a huge staple for Dawn as she has to prepare her own supper often when her mom works late.

 I loved this story it brought me back to when I was nine, or just a little boy in general. I remember sitting in those cylinder cement block spying on things with binoculars or lying in the snow or grass or up in a tree being an observer as mind ran wild with innocence.

When you think of a rabbit you think of them sitting quiet, often you are unaware that they are. They are one of nature's greatest observers. Through this story, Dawn's observations are also often undetected.

Rabbit is not about an animal but is an analogy for the quiet  undetected observations of Dawn.