
The arrival of a pet rabbit proves confronting as well as comforting for the fractured family in Melanie Cheng’s second novel.
Amy, Jin, and their ten-year-old daughter Lucie live in an inner-city suburb of Melbourne. Set towards the end of the pandemic lockdowns, when restrictions still exist, The Burrow is told from the alternating perspectives of Amy, Jin and Lucie, as well as Amy’s mother, Pauline, who comes to live with them after a fall.
Amy hasn’t spoken to her mother for almost four years, ever since tragedy befell the family when Amy and Jin’s six-month-old baby, Ruby, died. Pauline had suffered a stroke while she was bathing Ruby, and Ruby drowned. While Amy and Jin don’t blame Pauline, a lot has been left unsaid. Resentments have built, resulting in a fractured and stuck family.
How she longed to reach out to him then, wrap her arm around his chest, pull him towards her, fuck him. Instead, she mirrored the arc of his body, close but not quite touching. A pair of lovers, safe, but each hopelessly alone, in the left lateral position.
They all remain isolated in their own ways. Lucie is completing school from home, which she finds to be much better than being on her own during recess and lunch. Jin, a doctor in a public hospital, has to respond to the crisis that is the pandemic. Amy is a writer who no longer has the words. And Pauline is battling her own demons about her stroke and its aftermath.
The family adopts a rabbit on Lucie’s insistence. The arrival of this new member of the family, eventually named Fiver by Pauline, is the catalyst for change.
‘Look at that!’ Pauline said, genuinely delighted by the arrival of the ball of fluff and velveteen ears. Perhaps this was the purpose of pets after all, she thought, to provide a buffer between humans who had forgotten how to talk to one another.
This slim novella by Melanie Cheng is both beautiful and sad in its exploration of grief. When tragedy hits, everyone copes differently. A lot of the grief is unspoken, observed in the actions of the characters. As readers, we are gradually provided with not just the history of the family and what happened before, but we are also privy to the internal world of each family member.
Fiver, too, has a voice in three short sections. But it is his role in the family that provokes some of the changes. Through Fiver, Cheng manages to portray the fragility and vulnerability of humans in the wake of trauma.
The rabbit froze. His options were to hide or freeze, but the lights and sounds were coming from everywhere at once and he didn’t know where to go.
However, Fiver isn’t all cuteness and vulnerability. He is the distraction from their grief the family yearn for. But they are also repulsed by how fragile he can seem; a reflection of their hatred for their own weaknesses.
Cheng’s writing is restrained and sparse, allowing the reader to sit with the weight of what is occurring for the family, how broken they are. She beautifully weaves in the different points of view, allowing the reader to empathise with all the characters, not choosing sides. The voices are distinct, the pain is individual and raw.
The Burrow is a poignant look at grief and its impact on relationships. It is a compassionate and sensitive observation of how we hold on to anger and resentment, how we get stuck when confronted by trauma, and how we may hurt the ones closest to us.
Melanie Cheng The Burrow Text Publishing 2024 PB 208pp $32.99
STOP PRESS: The Burrow has just been shortlisted for the 2025 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction. The winner will be announced in March.
Sanchana Venkatesh is a writer and psychologist living on Cammeraygal land in Sydney’s lower north. You can find her on Instagram @sanchwrites and find more of her writing on www.sanchwrites.com
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Tags: Australian fiction, Australian women writers, Covid lockdowns, Covid pandemic, families, grief, Melanie | Cheng, pets
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