Harvard TF's First Book Reveals Old Soul of Young Author

White Rabbit is about the last day in an 88-year-old woman's life. This may sound like a depressing and dull plot for a book; however, White Rabbit is neither. Instead, it is an engaging and perceptive portrayal of the life of Ruth Caster Hubble, an endearing curmudgeon who lives in the Paradise Lagoon Condominiums in Southern California.

White Rabbit is also the first novel by Kate Phillips, a 29-year-old Harvard Ph.D. student in American Civilization. The praise for Phillips' first novel has been plentiful. The New York Times called her "gifted" and describes her novel as "a remarkable debut." USA Today listed the book as one of its "Best Bets." All this recognition is very welcome to Phillips, who is clearly enjoying the success of her novel. In spite of her youth, Phillips has been looking forward to becoming a published author for many years.

The reviews for her book have repeatedly expressed amazement that a young woman could write so convincingly about a woman sixty years her senior. However, Phillips doesn't see anything strange in her decision to write about a woman so much older than herself. She even expressed mischievous regret that the book wasn't published sooner; she had hoped to be a published novelist by the time she was 25. Ruth, a very convincing 88-year-old, was born in the mind of a 23-year-old.

The character of Ruth was loosely inspired by Phillips' grandmother. "White rabbit" or "rabbit rabbit" is a game that Phillips used to play with her grandmother and the rest of her family: on the first day of each month, the first person to say "white rabbit" would have good luck for the rest of the month.

Phillips began writing the manuscript for White Rabbit less than two years after her 1988 graduation from Dartmouth College. She says she has always been interested in writing, but did not write fiction during her college years, with the exception of a few short stories that she self-deprecatingly describes as "crappy."

After graduation, she went to China on a Dartmouth program and taught composition at Beijing Normal University. The Tiananmen Square protests began while Phillips was living in Beijing; the university where she was teaching was closed down. Phillips witnessed the bloody government crackdown that crushed the student protest movement. She says the experience made her rethink her own life.

While her sympathy and hope was with the protesters, she was also aware that somehow it wasn't her fight and she could only be a spectator and an outsider. She says the experience made her eager to return to her own roots. After only a few more weeks in South East Asia, Phillips returned to her parent's home in Claremont, California and began working on White Rabbit.

Phillips expressed surprise that readers have focus so much on Ruth's age as the subject of the novel. She explains that, to her, Ruth's frustration, loneliness and humanity were much more important than Ruth's age.

She is clearly very fond of her characters. Phillips' love for Ruth and her dopey but sweet husband Henry comes through in the book, and gives the reader a special insight and affection for the characters. Phillips also points out that her fondness for her characters helped her return to and rework the manuscript in the years between its first draft and its publication. Even now, it is clear that Phillips takes an active interest in how people respond to her characters and interpret their actions.

Phillips sees White Rabbit as part of the tradition of Californian dystopian novels. When she began writing, her vision of California was relatively bleak. She wanted to emphasize the isolation and loneliness that often comes with living in a condominium community like Ruth's "Paradise Lagoon." She was also concerned with the rapid growth and development that was choking the state. Now, after a few Boston winters, Phillips says her vision of California is more positive.

Phillips' interest in California is pervades other areas of her life as well. Her doctoral dissertation is about Helen Hunt Jackson, a nineteenth-century Californian poet, essayist, novelist and reformer. Jackson was one of the first to portray the bleaker side of life in California.

Phillips says she is very interested in American literary traditions. She cites Carswell Professor of English and American Literature and Language Sacvan Bercovitch's "Myth of America" course, and Powell and Cabot Professor of American Literature Alan Heimert's English 70, as important influences. (She has also been a teaching fellow for both courses.) Other dystopian novels that have interested Phillips include Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, West's The Day of the Locust and Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49.

Phillips has a new novel underway titled The Shadow Life. The book is a love story about the relationships between the heroine Mona, her war veteran boyfriend, and her two close female friends. Phillips's characters are much closer to her own age this time: the story begins when the women graduate from high school and follows their lives for the next ten years. Phillips has set aside this novel in order to finish her dissertation and receive her degree. When she graduates she intends to return to finish The Shadow Life and return to California.

White Rabbit is a well-written and exciting book. The characters are lovingly sculpted and emerge from the book vividly and convincingly. In many ways, Ruth's life is remarkably ordinary, but Phillips tells her story so well, and with so much sincerity and fondness, that White Rabbit becomes an absorbing read.