Rabbit Yard

by Leila Helena Grillo

Rabbit Yard is an art and literary collection - both unconditionally true and absurdly fictitious - by Leila Helena Grillo revolving around the concepts of memory, dreams, and everything in between. Separated into four parts, or "movements", in the form of a full musical symphony - Prelude, Interlude, Swan Song, and Reprise - Leila reflects on childhood, the manic mind, and the universal, as well as personal, actions involved in bathing in the soup of recollection. Through a series of vignettes, short narratives, and black and white photographs, the readers take the positions of an elegantly twisted theater audience absorbed in the ceaseless absurdities and beauties of ruminating and forgetting.

146 pages, Paperback

Published August 9, 2020

Reviews

[Lilit · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A field of rabbits. A field of memories”(108). Rabbit Yard , by Leila Helena Grillo is a visual, auditory, textural, and all around sensory experience. The reader is thrashed around yet afloat, abandoned yet guided, secretly peeking yet seated front row and center at the stage of Grillo’s mind, dreams, memories and experiences. We, just as the writer, are unaware whether what we are reading is reality or merely figments of her imagination; or perhaps whips and specks of her dreams. But such questions do not arise because the book makes it clear that the narrator herself is only here to convey what she herself feels, sees, hears, touches, tastes, and it does not matter whether the fragments of her stories are real or not. Personally, the book felt as though I was laying atop of a calm turquoise sea while gazing at the vibrant stars accompanied solely by my breath, my ever changing reflection and a few squawking gulls, whilst simultaneously drowning every now and then, tasting sea water, tangling in seaweed, going against the unforgiving tides and thrashed by the waves. Just as one approaches the vast sea, unaware of its agenda or of its intent, the same can be said about the book. You must let the pages take you away, the visuals unfold in your mind, and textures be felt upon your finger tips. I highly appreciate Grillo for being simultaneously vulnerable, personal, fragile yet distant, a mystery and an enigma. That takes a rare form of writer to embody without the issue of an overbearing and flip flopping tone. Grillo carries that wonderful sense of naivety and purity one embodies when their mind is young, regardless of the book’s dark themes.

The title of the book is a very fitting metaphor for what the book represents. A rabbit yard: a yard of fleeting, difficult to catch, impossible to fully look upon, and observe in their fullest detail, small mammals. The rabbit. Easily startled and flighty, tempting to touch and tempting to catch but very hard to do so. The same can be said about memories and the yard that is the human mind. The mind is the gateway to all of our memories; whether they are cherished or abandoned. But there are so many running away, scurrying about or hiding in the pitch black darkness where even our mind has forgotten to inspect. Though we try and though we desire with all of our being, some of these memories are simply impossible to revisit. Impossible to feel the same breath taking feeling; an exact replica of the experience we so wish we could replay without an end in sight. Grillo successfully seasons the book with elaborate metaphors and similes that further enrich and ripen the sensory experience for the reader. To prove my point, here are a few examples that lingered in my mind, “my head would reach the woman resting on the moon” (21), “It is incredibly frightening to think that they, that this, that all I have written is fading away from my memory, their bodies, hands, mouths, could shatter at any moment like porcelain dolls. Sometimes if I am lucky enough, I can catch those fleeting images running across to the other side of the river before they all but disintegrate in my hand like sand “ (54). The book flows musically as well; separated into 4 parts, Prelude, Interlude, Swan Song and Reprise. Grillo’s use of extravagant alliterations and exquisite poetic language mirrors the structure of the book. In conclusion, Rabbit Yard , is a beautiful shadow, the morning fog, the restless sea, a rabbit’s snow white fur, a drag of a cigarette, and that timeless feeling of the brush of one’s fingertips against the ones of whom they love. Grillo’s book can only be described through senses and through distinct feelings and that is exactly what makes up the mysterious human memory.

[Aviv Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a certain sort of book that will understand you better than your friends do, precisely during nights when you want to be alone and—perhaps selfishly—feel another’s aloneness, too. It is as if you cross paths on the streets of a familiar but blurry country to which you are both foreign. You glance at this stranger and she glances at you, unable to hide her reflective daze from her face. You're stunned by such a rarity, and choose to follow her.

Her sensitive but detached gaze gently lets you know that she may not know where she is going, because in her mind the border that divides Anywhere from Nowhere is always moving. The spontaneity, however, is growing on you. Along the way to the eternal wherever, you hear her talking to herself about her dreams as if they were memories and about her memories as if they were dreams. The only things that tether you to the present are the same things that tether her: the surrounding landscapes and towns that drench your uncoated body with rains of detail, the silhouettes of humanity passing you by despite your longing, and rabbits that invade like thoughts before bedtime.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The young author reflects deeply on her life and conjures up beautiful imagery making the reader wonder if it's reality, fantasy, or a combination of both. She has the ability to describe the most mundane object in alluring and extraordinary detail which gives her writing an ethereal quality. However, the reader is brought back to earth with unexpected peppers of humor.