Review: 'The Hare,' by Melanie Finn

By Melanie Finn. (Two Dollar Radio, 320 pages, $16.99.)

Masculinity is toxic, decisions are poor and the class divide is deep in Melanie Finn's provocative fourth novel, "The Hare," a harrowing thriller about survival and self-discovery.

Lonely, timid and orphaned, art student Rosie meets the worldly older antiques dealer Bennett in 1983 at New York's Museum of Modern Art, a copy of Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus" peeking from his jacket pocket. She's swept into his WASP-y milieu, charmed by his manners and thrilled by his wild stories and lust.

She's soon staying with him at the boathouse of the wealthy Hobie and Mitzi. Hobie warns Rosie about "troubled" Bennett, saying his family has "cut him off," then gives her money for an abortion after she confesses she's pregnant.

Two years later, Rosie and Bennett are still living at the boathouse with the baby, Miranda. Rosie's sense of foreboding is growing. Hobie cryptically tries to help her again; hours later she's awakened as Bennett puts luggage into his BMW. He says he has taken a job as a professor at an elite college in Vermont and they're off, sirens in the distance, headed to a rodent-infected house deep in the country. He's gone for long stretches, and impoverished Rosie comes to rely on herself and the land, as well as the flinty kindness of her odd neighbor Billy.

As years pass, Bennett's deceptions compound, leading Rosie to confront ugly truths and make disturbing choices to protect herself and her daughter. In 2019, she's still feeling the repercussions and struggling to get by.

Finn addresses a panoply of social concerns while presenting questions of fate and fortune: Are we doomed to relive and repeat the past? If so, what do we do about it?