Hugo Rifkind (2024) Rabbits.

Warning: This book contains Tories. People whose sense of entitlement is so extreme they think they own Edinburgh, Scotland, the United Kingdom, Europe, the world, the universe…well, you get the picture. Tories.

Hugo Rifkind is the son of Malcolm. Many of you might not know who that is or was. I do. Believe me. I do.

It is with great regret that I admit to liking Rabbits. Tommo, the narrator, is a rich man’s Holden Caulfield. He goes to a private school, which obviously, Hugo also went to in Edinburgh that was full of complete Tory cunts. Here’s the bit where I tell you I shagged a girl from Morningside. That’s the posh part of Edinburgh. No, she wasn’t a Tory. I’d never shag a Tory. But she was so dirty enough to put HP brown sauce on the yolk of her fried egg, and laugh, as if she didn’t care. Anyway, back to the proper story.

Tommo Dwarkin falls in with the rich, horsey crowd at school through a kind of accident. Johnnie Burchill’s brother blows his head off with a shotgun. Ha. One Tory down, you’re thinking. That’s a good way to start a novel.

1993. Tommo had just turned sixteen. He’s not part of the horsey set at school. His dad is an unsuccessful writer—in the way most writers are—then he’s a moderately successful screenwriter and writer in the way 99% of writers are not. Tommo’s mum has multiple sclerosis. And he has an elder sister, Annie, which is part of the backstory.

The question remains: what really happened to Johnnie Burchill’s brother, Douglas?

Tommo falls in with the right crowd by the unfortunate accident that’s not an accident.

‘Because Douglas was by himself. Or that’s what I heard from Chobber from Glenalmond, who heard it from Nelly, who got it from Marcus’s dad because he’s mates with Fusty’s family. And they’re next door.’

Next door means the next estate, where shooting and hunting—rarely of rabbit—takes place. Tommo, of course, falls in lust with the landowner’s daughter, Flora. Nothing ever lasts when you’re sixteen, including being sixteen. Rabbits is a sympathetic look at the Tory scum in school and rural settings for kids on the edge of adult life—and death. Read on.    

Unleash the Beastie! https://bit.ly/bannkie