"One day short of the fourth official annual observance of a divorce (the husband insisted, the wife resisted, the husband filed first, the wife filed under duress), what woman wouldn't be unusually out of sorts?" But the last thing Jane Samuels expects is to be clobbered on the head by a six-foot hare in midtown Manhattan. Like a 1990s Alice, Jane pursues her rabbit through a Wonderland of big-city adventures, where elevators hold grudges and walls not only have ears but genitals. Reeling from the bunny hop on her forehead, Jane tries to make sense of the encounter with the help of her longtime friend Susan (monumentally self-possessed), her new friend the school crossing guard (the only witness to the hare-mugging), the married psychiatrist Jane's been having a fling with, and a new friend named Gerald with a nose that performs wonders. Written in a breezy, flip style filled with wordplay and haiku-like descriptions, Jane's Bad Hare Day is the offbeat saga of a forty-something woman adrift in an uncertain world. "This is not some Aesop fable," Jane insists, "this is life."
Carol Ann Sima's achievement is to fold fable into real life for a completely fresh and original look at dealing with life's rabbit punches.