Robert Bunny, a toy bunny rabbit, observes the steady decline of a family he so desperately wants to be a part of.
His is the only voice of reason as he connects the crumbling mind of Deborah to her son Alex, whilst she tries to save him from the very worst of himself.
The Shape of Guilt charts a pattern of secrecy and trauma, one which culminates in a brutal and drastic action. Will Robert Bunny be able to save the ones he loves?
Season’s bleatings, my wonderful tribe.
It’s taken me a few weeks to write this review because, quite frankly, the final chapters of this novel rendered me speechless. This is one of those debuts that makes me doubt my own writing ability, because what the author did here is nothing short of pure talent.
Our story revolves around a mother whose son is in a coma, following an attempt on his life. She hasn’t left the hospital in weeks, and her husband is increasingly concerned about her mental health. She has a judgmental sister who provides no comfort, and no real idea of whether or not her son will wake up. Oh, and there’s the bunny. The bunny with the telepathic link with her, and her son.
I initially assumed that this story was going to centre around the bunny, which would turn out to be some sort of metaphor for the mental health aspects of this story. Oh, how wrong I was. The story IS told from the perspective of the bunny, which was weird and great, and allowed me as the reader to view this story through an external lens, rather than through one of the human characters. You’d think that might not work, since we tend to form our empathy for characters through identifying with at least one of them, but here this device was effective because it allowed me to view each character a bit more objectively, which actually increased my interest because I wasn’t siding with anyone in particular (or even aware of if I should be). However, the bunny is by no means a lazy shortcut to illustrate the insanity of a character, which is what it would usually be used for in a story with these kinds of themes, and so I was pleasantly surprised by its actual function (which I will not spill here, because of spoilers).
Outside of the bunny, we have the mum, who my heart broke for because this is a hellish situation for any parent. I also really empathised with how the people around her seemed to be treating her, as if all of her decisions and thoughts were totally irrational, on account of her prior mental health issues. Her husband and sister talk to her in an infantilising way that implies her judgment can’t be trusted, and that she’s overdramatic, when actually her response to what’s happening with her son seems quite understandable from where I’m sitting. I’d imagine that many devoted parents wouldn’t want to leave the hospital, in the hopes of being there if their kid might awaken from a coma.
The son was a mystery, because for most of the book we don’t know why he would do something like this. There’s also a question hanging over the husband and the sister. All in all, this is a short book but it’s one full of questions that demand answers, and it’s full of fascinating characters whose endings I had to discover, and I hoped they’d all be okay and reach some sort of healing.
Everything is painted in such an engaging way and I was so engrossed that I forgot for a moment that this is a horror story…
The revelations are nothing short of horrific genius. I was appalled, shocked, and confused about who I should be extending my sympathies to, which made me confused about my own moral compass. This story would have been interesting enough had it just followed a typical path without any twists thrown in, but the author decided to go dark, and it worked. This, as the title suggests, is a story about guilt. I don’t know about you, but I find that guilt is one of the most unpleasant and potentially destructive emotions. It makes people feel awful, annihilates self esteem, creates emphatic defensiveness, generates anger, renders some unable to take accountability, makes liars of people, and impacts decision making.
What the author did particularly well was present all of this as entirely human, from several different angles, providing a wider scope of the impact of one person’s…let’s call them “flaws”.
This is a heavy story and if you have any trigger warnings, you should check this book before diving in, but it’s an excellent read and a definite recommendation from me. If you’d like to check out the book or the author, I’ve popped some links below for you:
Bleeeeat!
Happy Goat Horror 
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