The Flat Rabbit

A dog and a rat come across a rabbit which has apparently been squashed by a car. It's completely flat and also presumably dead, which is completely skipped over. Nobody even mentions death in the book. They look at her for a while and then think that she looks kind of sad all by herself and so they pick her up and take her home. They then attach her to a kite, and the next day they fly her, on the kite, up into the air. The dog then asks the rat if he wants to go up on the kite. The end.

What is this? Is it supposed to be a meditation on death? Is it just supposed to be surreal? There's a quote on the front from the New York Times calling it, "quietly profound." I think you actually have to say something in order to be profound, and I cannot figure out what this book is saying. I just can't. It does not make any sense.

I mean, clearly the characters take a long time coming up with this idea of what they should do with the dead rabbit. They consider bringing her back to where she lives but worry that people would be suspicious. It's only because the dog sees somebody else flying a kite that he comes up with that idea, and it takes them a lot of work to accomplish it. But why? Why did they do that, of all things? I mean, why did he think that flying a dead rabbit on a kite was a good idea?

I can only think of the "Cat Copter," the taxidermied pet cat that somebody made into a drone. But I don't think the person who did that thought that it would be fun for the cat. The cat's dead. The cat doesn't care anymore. Why? Why would you do this, other than out of an unusual sense of amusement?

If "quietly profound" means when you finish a book, you go, "huh??" Then I guess it's "quietly profound." But I've read a lot of books that I couldn't make heads or tails of after finishing, "Mustache Baby" and "The Cabbage Princess" for example, and I definitely wouldn't call them "profound."