Tess Gunty’s ‘fiercely original’ The Rabbit Hutch wins inaugural Waterstones debut fiction prize | Books

Tess Gunty’s “fiercely original and innovative” The Rabbit Hutch has won the inaugural Waterstones debut fiction prize.

The Rabbit Hutch focuses on the residents of an affordable housing complex in the fictional rust-belt town of Vacca Vale, Indiana. Issues including poverty, gentrification and an inadequate care system are seen through the lens of Blandine, an “ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent” young woman who is offered a chance to escape her surroundings.

Gunty, who will receive a £5,000 cash prize and “the promise of ongoing commitment” from Waterstones, grew up in South Bend, Indiana. Feeling that her hometown was inadequately represented in fiction, she called her novel an effort to “reclaim a place derided as ‘flyover country’, a place dismissed as unsophisticated and luckless, small-minded and pitiable, boring and ugly and irrelevant”. She said she wanted to “insist” that “these homes and their people are worthy of attention”.

Speaking to the Observer earlier this year, Gunty said: “One of the things that frustrates me is that politicians seem to treat the midwest, especially the rust belt, as though it’s home to only one kind of voter with pain and rage who is easily exploited, and that voter is usually profiled to be a working-class white man who voted for Trump.” The writer, who now lives in LA, added that “in fact, the rust belt is extremely diverse; it’s much more diverse than the US is on average, and there are lots of different ideologies there. It’s a place that’s vast and mysterious.”

The Rabbit Hutch, published in the UK by independent press Oneworld, was selected as winner by a panel of Waterstones booksellers from a shortlist of six debut novels that also included Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde and Memphis by Tara M Stringfellow.

Bea Carvalho, Waterstones’ head of fiction, said the novel “truly has the feel of the next great American novel: it is an exquisite, triumphant book which at once recalls the very best of the contemporary canon, while remaining fiercely original and innovative”.

She went on to say that “booksellers were blown away by Gunty’s playfulness, her boundless compassion, and vast emotional intellect: this is boundary-pushing, daring fiction and we are hugely excited to see what this talented author does next”.

Sarah Ditum, in her Guardian review, said The Rabbit Hutch “balances the banal and the ecstatic in a way that made me think of prime David Foster Wallace. It’s a story of love, told without sentimentality; a story of cruelty, told without gratuitousness.”

The Waterstones debut fiction prize is a new award for first novels of all genres, including fiction in translation. The bookshop chain also runs a children’s book prize and names an overall book of the year.

Tess Gunty’s “fiercely original and innovative” The Rabbit Hutch has won the inaugural Waterstones debut fiction prize.

The Rabbit Hutch focuses on the residents of an affordable housing complex in the fictional rust-belt town of Vacca Vale, Indiana. Issues including poverty, gentrification and an inadequate care system are seen through the lens of Blandine, an “ethereally beautiful and formidably intelligent” young woman who is offered a chance to escape her surroundings.

Gunty, who will receive a £5,000 cash prize and “the promise of ongoing commitment” from Waterstones, grew up in South Bend, Indiana. Feeling that her hometown was inadequately represented in fiction, she called her novel an effort to “reclaim a place derided as ‘flyover country’, a place dismissed as unsophisticated and luckless, small-minded and pitiable, boring and ugly and irrelevant”. She said she wanted to “insist” that “these homes and their people are worthy of attention”.

Speaking to the Observer earlier this year, Gunty said: “One of the things that frustrates me is that politicians seem to treat the midwest, especially the rust belt, as though it’s home to only one kind of voter with pain and rage who is easily exploited, and that voter is usually profiled to be a working-class white man who voted for Trump.” The writer, who now lives in LA, added that “in fact, the rust belt is extremely diverse; it’s much more diverse than the US is on average, and there are lots of different ideologies there. It’s a place that’s vast and mysterious.”

The Rabbit Hutch, published in the UK by independent press Oneworld, was selected as winner by a panel of Waterstones booksellers from a shortlist of six debut novels that also included Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde and Memphis by Tara M Stringfellow.

Bea Carvalho, Waterstones’ head of fiction, said the novel “truly has the feel of the next great American novel: it is an exquisite, triumphant book which at once recalls the very best of the contemporary canon, while remaining fiercely original and innovative”.

She went on to say that “booksellers were blown away by Gunty’s playfulness, her boundless compassion, and vast emotional intellect: this is boundary-pushing, daring fiction and we are hugely excited to see what this talented author does next”.

Sarah Ditum, in her Guardian review, said The Rabbit Hutch “balances the banal and the ecstatic in a way that made me think of prime David Foster Wallace. It’s a story of love, told without sentimentality; a story of cruelty, told without gratuitousness.”

The Waterstones debut fiction prize is a new award for first novels of all genres, including fiction in translation. The bookshop chain also runs a children’s book prize and names an overall book of the year.