‘How rare, this delicacy—this calm, sweet, desolated wisdom.’

‘Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow is stupendously good. This is a novel that deals with the crucial elements of our lives – love and family and grief and guilt and responsibility – and does so without a whiff of sentimentality and does so fearlessly. As in real life, the characters keep surprising us. The power of The Burrow is in the unflinching yet empathetic command of the novelist, in the candid beauty of the language. It’s a remarkable work, nuanced and human and adult.’

‘Such a fan of Melanie Cheng’s work. Quiet writing with such fierce emotion. This one’s another gift of a novel.’

‘An absolutely beautiful book…It might be my novel of the year.’

‘A tender, compelling story of family and grief…Skilful and restrained…Artfully marries her narrative’s interfamilial disconnection with Covid’s inextricable qualities of isolation and distance…With a soft beauty, Melanie Cheng’s novel articulates quiet as stagnancy, one in which we feign security as we quarantine from ourselves and each other, down in the dark burrows of our minds.’

‘A beautiful book…Restrained and multifaceted…I couldn’t put it down.’

‘Gulped it. I’ve been a Melanie Cheng fan since our first books came out. But this one is next level—it conveys so much human experience so sparingly that it seems to defy the laws of gravity. Stunning.’

‘An exquisite portrait of grief and the small things that save us. I was mesmerised.’

‘The Burrow is truly exquisite. At its centre is a small fawn-coloured rabbit and a family tragedy that has left everyone scarred. The writing, and the world it evokes, has such tenderness and beauty. Line up and hand over your cash as soon as this one hits shelves.’

‘[The Burrow] has already become one of my favourites of all time.’

‘The Burrow…skilfully brings coherence to its explorations of compassion, commitment, and suffering.’

‘A triumph of restrained and tender storytelling…A nuanced study of one family’s grief, but it’s also a magnificent portrait of modern loneliness.’

‘On the surface, [The Burrow] is a very quiet, understated book; but of course there is a lot going on beneath that surface, down in the burrow…Definitely recommended.’

‘Melanie Cheng’s exquisite novel about a grieving family is a superb balance of unexpected laughter, surprising grace, and the ubiquitous human need for furry love.’

‘[The Burrow] is bursting with insight and compassion, written from a place of deep understanding and kindness. Cheng has never been in finer form—delicate and nuanced, yet unafraid to face the horrors of ordinary life.’

‘A wonderful, engrossing novel.’

‘[There’s] an incredible humanity in being a doctor, an incredible ability to read people…[The Burrow is] very moving, very beautifully done…Really admire this one.’

‘4 stars. The Burrow packs in a lot of heightened and charged emotions. Cheng writes with characteristic sensitivity and empathy…It’s a quiet, reflective book, but all the more powerful for its understatedness…In this clear-eyed and unsentimental study, a chink of hope is allowed to shine through.’

‘This beautifully contained and elegant novel resulted in me gasping for air…This visceral tale of one family—one bubble—will knock you over in the same way Helen Garner does with her writing…I fell in love with this complicated, cautious family…This novel is a gift.’

‘5 stars. Tender, restrained and thoughtful…[The Burrow] is beautiful, and I kept thinking about it after I finished it…An understated gem.’

‘A soft little bunny rabbit is at the centre of this family’s life as they navigate grief and the complexities of close intergenerational relationships…A quick pandemic novel based in Australia, with nostalgic mentions of Watership Down for good measure.’

‘Gathers a delicate balance of modernity and the past…A quiet novel with moments that feel like they could explode…Reminds us how quickly life can change in an instant, whether you are a human or a rabbit.’

‘The book you should be reading…A heart-rending tale…Suffused with love and care.’

‘Packs an emotional punch and the moods shift like a conjurer’s act. It’s a wholly uplifting novel, and yet I can’t quite put my finger on why. Trust me, it’s extraordinary.’

‘4 stars. [Conveys] the ordinariness of the extraordinary…Things buried and unsaid are a life package, but so are love and hope and compassion. Softly, softly, the tale unfolds.’

‘Cheng’s prose is simple and unadorned, but cuts directly to the heart of things: a single sentence can expose a world of truth.’

‘Cheng is a technically clever writer, maintaining [a] pleasing forward motion and light touch. That’s the true success of the book…Managing to draw out the ordinary everyday tragedies…It’s good writing that knows where it’s going, an increasingly rare quality.’

‘I loved [The Burrow]. I was surprised by it…Read it all in one sitting. Melanie Cheng crafted [an] insular world so beautifully and with such an economy of language.’

‘Melanie Cheng understands ordinary people—their love, their quiet desperation, their hope—and the restrained, elegant prose of The Burrow is testament to this. The novel is slim and each word is carefully chosen. It feels as if every sentence is a distillation…The feeling one gets when reading The Burrow echoes its title: one feels held and safe, as if one is in the hands of someone who knows exactly what they are doing.’

‘A quiet and moving story…With a compassionate eye for detail, this is an exquisite exploration of life.’

‘An elegant, tender story of grief, hope—and a pet rabbit…The narrative is deftly structured to reveal, gradually, the history of the family, while also analysing the minds and souls of its members with tenderness and compassion.’

‘[A] quietly powerful novel…The reader will determine whether the mini lop in The Burrow is a catalyst for change or a silent observer of their evolving relationships…This novel is about ordinary people dealing with extraordinary suffering; Cheng handles them with sympathy and compassion, like you would a delicate mini lop.’

‘Cheng is an elegant, unpretentious writer, carefully observant of the rhythms of ordinary human life—but when her imagination moves outside, into the natural world, The Burrow becomes something deeper, stranger, and truly beautiful.’

‘The metaphoric load on the rabbits in balanced by an intensely human story…[There are] many moments of joy, especially the joy of connections, and tricks of light and texture that make it dense with detail for the reader to linger and savour…A precisely constructed simplicity makes it a smooth, even quick read; a simplicity that enhances the depth of empathy and humanity in a tale of grief and rabbits.’

‘Moving and masterful.’

‘Centring on themes of grief, love, guilt and grace, this story is wise, tender and triumphant.’

‘Captivating and heart-wrenching family saga…Melanie Cheng perfectly captures the anxious hope that comes with a last-ditch effort for healing as well as the impending area that what is broken may not be fixed.’

‘The Burrow is a deceptively small-canvas novel graced with an outsized wisdom.’

‘An incredibly moving rendering of an ordinary family living an ordinary life with extraordinary moments…A quietly beautiful and tender tale.’

‘Cheng understood what it is to be human, to feel so much and so little all at the same time…Cheng masterfully investigates the juxtapositions of emotion…I would easily pick up the book again, and will be on the lookout for Cheng’s next book!’

‘[A] slim but deeply rendered exploration of a family reeling after the unthinkable happens…What’s so quietly devastating about The Burrow is just this very thing: the family slowly becoming known to themselves, each other and us. If only they would do X, Y or Z, everything would be better, we think as they go about their lives…We watch and wait for them to get there, holding out breath all the while.’

‘Cheng explores with great sensitivity the complex emotions of each character, from guilt, regret and anger to self-loathing, and the impact of the tragedy on their various relationships.’

‘8/10 stars. A short, sharp, poignant family drama.’

‘Each character’s bond with the rabbit proves restorative…Readers will be moved.’

‘Melanie Cheng’s novel The Burrow is the most moving book I have read all year, an exploration of grief both eloquently and elegantly told.’

‘A slim but deeply rendered exploration of a family after the unthinkable happens…What’s so quietly devastating about The Burrow is just this very thing: the family slowly becoming known to themselves, each other and us…From a remove, like Fiver [the rabbit], we watch and wait for them to get there, holding our breath all the while.’

‘The pandemic book I didn’t know I needed…[The Burrow] explores how we make sense of tragedy in the absence of a religious worldview…Ultimately, [Melanie Cheng] leads us to an ending just unexpected enough to be satisfying, while simultaneously resisting the pull of a tidier resolution.’

‘My favourite book of the year…Beautifully written. It’s funny, it’s very, very moving, and it’s a beautifully finished novel.’

‘[The Burrow] knows what it’s doing and it executes it with lovely precision and grace…Belongs in the great tradition of the Australian suburban domestic novel.’

‘I loved Melanie Cheng’s second novel, The Burrow, a tender and scrupulous look at a family dealing with grief and guilt…Cheng brings all her characters—including the rabbit—to life with crystal-clear writing. The Burrow is desperately moving.’

‘I thought Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow was an exceptional novel from this year, a novel of exquisite simplicity and humanity.’

‘An exquisite morsel of a book where each character is perfectly realised through their response to a shared grief.’

‘The Burrow holds a note of calm in the face of terrible loss and emotional turbulence. I was engrossed by this sage, mature and beautifully written novel.’

‘Melanie Cheng’s quietly devastating novella, The Burrow, lays bare the precarious balance of family life after unimaginable tragedy and might well be the best pandemic novel written.’

‘The Burrow broke my heart and lifted it.’

‘Cheng’s main achievement is that she has found the language to convey the way grief feels. Her writing provides a reminder that, when depicted with originality and skill, the movements of a character’s mind can provide all the narrative we need.’

‘Melanie Cheng’s tender novella has stayed with me since I read it in a single setting…This book describes so much about how grief can push us apart then pull us back together; and the relationship between Lucie and Pauline is so warmly, vividly drawn that I couldn’t shake it.’

‘Cheng’s small but mighty story perfectly captures the disorientation and disarray that arrives with grief…Cheng could easily have written a dark story with no hope to be found. What she crafts instead is an accurate depiction of the rollercoasterof grief and how the little things can bring us light and hope…With one of the most beautiful covers I have seen in a while, The Burrow should not be overlooked.’

‘Best novel I read all year. And I read some great novels this year. A slender work of such composure and grace and humanity…It’s superb.’

‘Short, sweet and lovely…Really hit the spot.’