* 2021 Vermont Book Award, Winner.
* 2021 New England Book Awards, Finalist.
* A3C Reads: March 2023 Book of the Month.
"A Most Anticipated Book of 2021" --Elle, Bustle, BuzzFeed,
Vulture
The Hare is an affecting portrait of Rosie Monroe, of her resilience
and personal transformation under the pin of the male gaze.
Raised to be obedient by a stern grandmother in a blue-collar town in
Massachusetts, Rosie accepts a scholarship to art school in New York
City in the 1980s. One morning at a museum, she meets a worldly man
twenty years her senior, with access to the upper crust of New England
society. Bennett is dashing, knows that "polo" refers only to ponies,
teaches her which direction to spoon soup, and tells of exotic escapades
with Truman Capote and Hunter S. Thompson. Soon, Rosie is living with
him on a swanky estate on Connecticut's Gold Coast, naively in sway to
his moral ambivalence. A daughter--Miranda--is born, just as his current
con goes awry forcing them to abscond in the middle of the night to the
untamed wilderness of northern Vermont.
Almost immediately, Bennett abandons them in an uninsulated cabin
without a car or cash for weeks at a time, so he can tend a teaching job
that may or may not exist at an elite college. Rosie is forced to care
for her young daughter alone, and to tackle the stubborn intricacies of
the wood stove, snowshoe into town, hunt for wild game, and forage in
the forest. As Rosie and Miranda's life gradually begins to normalize,
Bennett's schemes turn malevolent, and Rosie must at last confront his
twisted deceptions. Her actions have far-reaching and perilous
consequences.
An astounding new literary thriller from a celebrated author at the
height of her storytelling prowess, The Hare bravely considers a
woman's inherent sense of obligation--sexual and emotional--to the male
hierarchy, and deserves to be part of our conversation as we reckon with
#MeToo and the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearing.
Rosie Monroe emerges as an authentic, tarnished feminist heroine.
