The Rabbit Club
By Christopher J. Yates
Hanover Square Press, 2025, $30
It’s clear from the first page of The Rabbit Club that Christopher J. Yates loves literature—its history, wisdom, and wordplay. Born and raised in the UK, he both toasts and roasts the Brits’ oddities, their superiority complex over the US, and their knack for holding long grudges. The novel’s protagonist, Alistair, who goes by Ali, straddles both cultures. He’s the son of Dolly, a Texan beauty queen, and Gel McCain, an aging rock star in the mold of Keith Richards, in the band the Pale Fires. Ali is a frosh at Cockbayne (or, in Yates’s parlance, a “fresher at uni”), a college in the UK pronounced like the last name of Nirvana’s Kurt. Gel abandoned Dolly and Ali before the child was two; they haven’t seen one another since. Speed ahead to college, which Ali chose in part because it was near his father’s massive country estate.
Ali’s first days in England highlight his complex feelings about being an American in the UK—about being abandoned by his famous father, about his aspirations to join the Saracens, an elite boys’ club to which one must be invited. Colored bands on the Saracens’ top hats indicate ascendant levels of hierarchy, named for differently colored rabbits. Here’s where the allusions to literature take flight. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a constant touchstone (top hats, rabbits, tea, drugs); Shakespearean quotes by Ali crop up like weeds, and Nabokov is batted about gleefully (note the band name, the Pale Fires). Brideshead Revisited is another obsession and recurring motif.
William Wynne-Goode is Ali’s assigned roommate, a snooty, pedigreed Brit whose purported destiny is to become a top government leader. The roomies don’t vibe at first, and Ali falls into the company of more bohemian types, including sister/brother twins Izzy and Guy, and a wannabe Rasta nicknamed T-bone. Of course, nothing is as it seems; chasms close, assumed truths fall apart, and feelings shatter. Ali’s lack of self-assuredness is exposed when he pretends to be a vegetarian to impress Izzy. T-bone reveals himself as the heir to a bank and a vast fortune. The twins, who have the same surname, were only pretending. By the time this emerges, hearts and loyalties have been broken, and tragedy ensues.
The novel’s narrative unspools in chapters which alternate with those printed in italics, and which describe the receipt of diary entries, one at a time, by a Professor William Goodwin, residing in Kidlington (a fictional town in upstate New York). I confess to feeling in the dark while reading these numerous italicized chapters until close to the end, after a seismic reveal.
Upon being reunited with Ali, who simply shows up at his estate and is at first chased away, Gel rues his careless ways and attempts to make amends with his son. (This despite his seventh wife trying to poison Ali at their first dinner together.) Ali constantly tests strangers about their love or hate of the Pale Fires, by then an oldies-but-goodies band whose frontman, according to some, was ruined by a Yoko-like Yankee, his mother. Ali’s suspicious of Gel’s intentions when his father throws him a surprise birthday party in the local pub. Gel receives so much attention that Ali thinks it was to sate his dad’s own voracious ego. Nothing is ever hunky dory, but they reconcile to a surprising degree.
Yates, who studied at Oxford and resides in New Paltz, carves fairly shallow caricatures for his cast, perhaps for brevity’s sake. I found myself yelling at the book for small things. For example, Ali runs out of money, unable to buy food. Many might look for work in order to survive, even under-the-table gigs—but not Ali. There are few solid female characters, and those of interest relate to the protagonist as romantic interests, either as object or pursuer. Yates drops in all sorts of Britishisms, and has Gel (the rocker) and Ali’s fellow student Vic, a Scot, talk in patois. So many Bardian quotes are scattered throughout dialogue that it feels like a constant humble brag. I can quote Shakespeare at any occasion! (He embeds Shakespeare lines within the Pale Fire’s pop song lyrics as well, which pulls a slender filament tauter between father and son.)
But clearly Yates loves novels, idolizes the authors of classics, and keeps their texts and motifs alive in a setting that combines traditional with contemporary. Who’s to quibble with that?
This article appears in August 2025.
