Rabbits

By (author) Hugo Rifkind

Tommo has just started at a new school – a training ground for the Scottish elite – when his friend Johnnie’s brother is found dead in a Land Rover on a Highland farm. There’s a shotgun at his feet. Nobody seems clear about what has happened, least of all Tommo.

A child of the middle class, and with new independence thrust upon him, Tommo finds himself invited into fading crumbling houses. It’s the early nineties and this elite is struggling for relevance. Alienated from the mainstream, and running low on inherited wealth, his peers have retreated into snobbery and fatalism. Half-remembered traditions mix with decadence and an awful lot of small dead animals. And sometimes, not just animals.

Awed by their poise and seduced by their hedonism, Tommo gradually becomes aware of sinister currents beneath the surface and a suppressed rage that threatens to explode into violence.

Reviews of Rabbits

'Rabbits is an instantly compelling novel; it is simultaneously poignant, peculiar, tragic, and very, very funny. Highly recommended' — Sathnam Sanghera 'A remarkable achievement, a novel that so well encapsulates the slightly feral condition of teenage boys tasting independence for the first time … recreates a world unknown to most readers, like Saltburn, rather creepily repellent, but with all its fascination to the outsider' — Linda Grant, Booker Shortlisted author of The Clothes on Their Backs