Review by Stacey O’Carroll
Author: Melanie Cheng
Publisher: Text Publishing
RRP: $32.99
Release Date: 1 October 2024
“It was the middle of spring. The curfew for metropolitan Melbourne had been lifted but restrictions were still in place…Jin had been driving for forty minutes, alone, first through country vineyards and later through graffitied outer suburbs, with the cardboard box containing the rabbit strapped into the passenger seat.”
The 2020-2021 lockdowns were a strange time for many of us. We became addicted to indoor plants, attempted to co-teach kids through online learning platforms, found a new appreciation for hand sanitiser, and many of us suffered lasting trauma. What this time also did was shine a spotlight on all internal and external problems. But what happens when you add a pet rabbit to the mix? For Melanie Cheng’s characters in The Burrow, the arrival of a tiny ball of fluff digs up long-buried secrets and creates a path through grief to hope.
“There was no blood, of course, when Ruby died. In that sense, Jin thought, drowning had to be the cleanest death.”
In The Burrow, Cheng’s second fictional novel, Amy, Jun, and their daughter Lucie are dealing with a half-renovated house and jobs as doctors during the pandemic. They are still processing the death of their other daughter, Ruby. To add to their chaotic but isolated lives, they buy a pet rabbit for Lucie. But not long after the rabbit begins to settle into its hutch, Amy’s mum, Pauline, has a fall and needs to live in their backyard granny flat bringing with her tension and the truth. Can the family make it through the Melbourne lockdowns together?
“They watched the rabbit with the collective intensity of a family watching a newborn, only instead of waiting for the flicker of a lip in a weak but thrilling imitation of a smile, they looked for hops and flops and a twisted acrobatic leap Lucie called a ‘binky.’
Cheng’s small but mighty story perfectly captures the disorientation and disarray that arrives with grief. Written in third-person from the point of view of each character (bunny rabbit excluded), the reader builds up a picture of the events that lead to the mother-daughter fractured relationship and disconnected marriage. Mixing up the perspectives in the chapters could have been disorienting for the reader. But in The Burrow, Cheng uses this technique to replicate the disorienting effect of grief. So effective is this structure that it makes the gut-wrenching discovery even more heartbreaking for the reader. However, if Cheng had written in first-person narrative, would the story have been more emotionally impactful? Perhaps this small amount of distance is needed for the reader to grasp the enormity of what the family is going through without drawing them too close and risking them missing the message of hope.
“It wasn’t just Ruby. Lucie had envisaged the deaths of everyone.”
Due to the subject matter of The Burrow, Cheng could easily have written a dark story with no hope to be found. What she crafts instead is an accurate depiction of the rollercoaster of grief and how the little things can bring us light and hope. Cheng has crafted flawed and real characters for whom the reader will be hoping there is a light at the end of the burrow.
“She looked over at Fiver, who was in a puddle of sunlight beneath the window, rendered calm and complaicant by illness—in this sense at least, he did resemble a small child.”
At only 184 pages, Cheng’s The Burrow packs a lot into its small size. Every word has a purpose, and Cheng’s general practitioner knowledge lends authenticity to the experiences of Amy and Jun. With one of the most beautiful covers I have seen in a while, The Burrow should not be overlooked.