... arrives at just the right time, serving as a fearless inquiry into the power of bodies and intimacy as well as a fierce acceptance of the inadequacy of words, which is rare for a writer, especially one with such rich prose, to admit. It’s more relevant than ever right now as the internet constantly uses words and terms with frustrating flippancy, collectively twisting and weaponizing language almost unintentionally.
... intense, erotically charged ... raises interesting questions about gender roles and relations ... a worthy contemplation of sexual politics, revealing how losing and finding yourself do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Their relationship seems designed to provoke: a young, queer woman entering into a relationship with a wealthy, powerful man 20 years her senior. It runs against the grain of what’s considered appropriate in contemporary, progressive dating culture ... But Songsiridej sidesteps the pitfalls and eschews sensationalism; instead, she has written a thoughtful, sexy and, at times, profoundly moving exploration of agency, desire and identity ... Songsiridej’s sex scenes are powerful and well-rendered, with sensual language that remains firmly focused on Rabbit’s emotional experience. They’re exciting without being salacious, transgressive without being lurid or gratuitous ... Little Rabbit is an impressive debut, and with her unflinching prose, Songsiridej shows us how important fearlessness and honesty are when it comes to creating great art.
With wonderful writing, Alyssa Songsiridej has created an exploration of how romantic relationships can and often do evolve—the initial phase that grows from tentative attraction to infatuation, the exploration of sexual intimacy of different degrees, the various trials of learning to live with each other, and finally the acceptance of an achieved normalcy, with various types of jealousy thrown in on the side. A different cut in the book also explores the relationship between a well-established older artist and an up-and-coming much younger one ... This is a deep novel that is well worth a read, and since it has several different layers, perhaps even more than one.
... there is little truly new here, not much to grab hold of our attention. The story’s only friction comes from moments of reflexivity — Waldman’s trap in action ... It is hard not to read their exchanges as anything other than an extension of Caroline’s vast and anxious interiority, dictated by a set of mores it is implied the reader must share ... Precisely because there is so little friction — which, in a novel about desire, feels more than strange — there is nothing really so objectionable about Little Rabbit, nor is there anything particularly rousing. It’s a smoothly plotted love affair with inconsequential obstacles, an emotional portrait composed of qualms but few real crises, a novel that can’t help but seem thin and rushed.
... puzzling if refreshingly risk-taking ... The relationship depicted here both challenges and disturbs, which would seem to be the point. Love is inexplicable and a hard taskmaster, and if Songsiridej doesn’t exactly nail what she wants, she asks important questions.
Hot and sometimes heavy-handed ... Some of the messages about class differences and sexuality feel a bit overstated, but the progression of the relationship is subtle and intriguing, and Songsiridej pulls off sex scenes that a lesser writer could have made cringeworthy. It adds up to an addictive tale of obsessive love.
He orders a gin martini, and somehow that does the trick. 'I knew, right then, that I would sleep with him.' Why? It’s unclear. For a dedicated writer, up at 5 a.m. every day to write before her administrative job, the narrator has a surprisingly limited vocabulary. In the onslaught of sex scenes and seductions that ensue, she fails to summon the specificity that might convince a reader of their chemistry. Instead, strange word choices... frequent clichés...and awkward phrasing...all make for a confusing and uncomfortable read ... 'I knew what Annie wanted,' the narrator thinks, 'a narrative, a pattern of elegantly spaced beats between "bad" and "good" to vindicate both my attitude then and how I felt about the choreographer now.' As it happens, the reader might want some of these things, too, and in the end, this novel fails to deliver them. An exploration of sexual dynamics that is too vague to illuminate or provoke.
