Melanie Cheng’s third book THE BURROW (Text Publishing 2024) was on my TBR list but rapidly moved up when it was recently longlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize. This slim novel packs a punch of emotional intensity.
Cheng’s second novel (her first publication was a short story collection), THE BURROW is a coalescence of her powers as a writer of the domestic minutiae of everyday lives, behind which lie vital and thought-provoking questions about families, love, loss and belonging.
This small, quiet novel had me turning the pages as if it was a thriller. Ostensibly about a family of three – Mum Amy, Dad Jin and daughter Lucie – along with the temporary addition of Amy’s mum Pauline as she recovers from a fall, at the centre of it all is their adopted rabbit, Fiver, who is shy, hesitant, cute, aloof; a pet who requires care, a rabbit who focuses their attention, an animal that comes into their lives at a crucial time and changes everyone’s perspective.
Set during the pandemic, Cheng subtly weaves covid isolation and restrictions into the setting, so that it is a familiar backdrop but not an oppressive cloud over the story. The other interesting background in the setting is that the family home remains in a stasis of renovation, an inertia of grand designs started but never finished, the house surrounded by bricks and partly covered by an enormous blue tarp. This too, is a symbol, as are so many things in the story, of torpor borne from grief.
THE BURROW is the perfect encapsulation of one family’s grief as seen from different points of view and various levels of understanding. A simple tale but one layered with meaning. Secrets and a family tragedy underscore the narrative.
This used to be a family of four but one has died in tragic circumstances, and we learn early on that the grandmother, Pauline, is somehow implicated in that tragedy. Losing a child is of course unspeakable and so they do not speak of it. Not of the cause, the reason, the blame, the effects or the aftermath of their grief. The author gives us hints, breadcrumbs of facts about events, from which we must parse the meaning of what has happened and how this family has ended up in the position they now occupy – a disjointed unit with individual members orbiting each other, occasionally colliding in conflict or moments of tenderness, but mostly each inhabiting their own space, trying to get by the best they can.
The rabbit lives in a hutch but the title refers I believe to the house, a burrow, a warren of rooms and outdoor spaces and haunted places and sacred spaces that each occupant makes use of (or avoids) in their own way.
Cheng writes in a deceptively simple manner and tells what is on the surface a straightforward narrative. But beneath the written words is a whole world of inference and questions, hidden secrets, incidents not spoken about, feelings not explored and relationships bound, hindered or even severed by the unspoken tragedy. Helen Garner has blurbed this book as a rare delicacy: ‘… this calm, sweet, desolated wisdom’ and these words of praise are entirely earned. THE BURROW is elevated from Cheng’s previous novel (also well-received) through delicate nuance and an intense emotional charge that pulses through the story, alighting on various characters and emphasising the intimate interiority of their innermost thoughts, desires and regrets.
The ending is in a certain way charmingly ambiguous, leaving the reader with the feeling that we have had the privilege of a peek into the hearts and minds of these characters, an almost voyeuristic but enlightening intrusion.
Cheng’s writing is lyrical, with beautiful phrases and scenes that have stayed in my mind, yet it is not sentimental or laden with unnecessary prose. The short chapters and pared back writing are exactly right to ask the reader to do some intellectual interpretation work while reading, without it being in any way difficult or dense. I adored this novel and am so pleased it’s being recognised in award categories. I highly recommend it.