When God was a Rabbit
Does this book sound like a good read? I didn’t love the title, it sounded as if it was trying too hard. Since I listened to Sarah Winman (the author) speak at the Hay House Festival and liked what I heard I wanted to read her. This book lay in my daughter’s bedroom gathering dust bunnies. She had abandoned it one-third of the way in. I didn’t let that stop me.
Have you ever read a book where you don’t feel safe with the author because they throw major life events at you suddenly, without warning? I tried to reason with myself. ‘That’s how life happens. It’s a style of writing.’ I told myself. She has been touted as brave and new in the literary world.
The problem is of course that in order to break the rules effectively, you need to know what the rules are.
Tragedies strike, as tragedies will. Without any forewarning or foreshadowing. Okay. But then, the author simply reports the tragedy, and then moves on to the next interlude - happy enough, until disaster strikes again. The event is neither explored, nor mulled over, and the effect on the main character is left for you to figure out. As a result, the reader forgets the incident, especially since it is rarely mentioned again in the book. It doesn’t come up either as a reflection on how it has affected the main character or as something she revisits when she is grown up. No inner life.
It is bizarre just how chaotic this book is. It gently touches strokes a huge number of issues like a shopper handling sweaters longingly but delves into none of the issues. First of all the Rabbit that features in the title of the book, makes up a very small portion of the book. No spoilers, so you will have to plod through it yourself to find out what happens. It’s supposed to be a story about a brother and sister as per the blurb. That’s largely incidental - I think the blurb writers had to find something to say. One doesn’t really know what the story is about. Friendship lost and found again? Gay rights? Growing up in the ’70s in England? 9/11? Cornwall? Domestic violence? Child sexual abuse? Homeschooling? I think even if you read the book you won’t remember the part about homeschooling. It’s only a short paragraph, with the solution offered before the problem has been raised.
I’m not the only one who gritted her teeth whenever she picked up the book.
This is what one reviewer wrote on Goodreads, Mark says, “of course all of these can be totally harmoniously co-joined and indeed they are but the story comes off its rails because of the bizarre and unreasonable loading up of accidents of chance and fantasy as it goes on”. There is just so much coincidence in this story I wonder whether the author had an editor at all. Who could believe such implausible events?
Faye says, “To me, it's like a big jigsaw puzzle and the author tried to put the pieces back together, but sadly some pieces were not put in the right spots or missing, even.”
To explain the irrelevant parts of the book - I mean the author could have written many more words by delving into the events instead of skimming over them - I quote Faye again, “there's actually an event in the book, where she and two others picked up a girl who was running away, and I still don't know who the other two were”
Elizabeth talks about “the unnecessary and somewhat sloppy storytelling that's to come. It annoys me greatly when an author glosses over the realities of life by making characters incredibly rich.”
Grace Harwood puts her finger on it with her review
“F Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, "character is plot, plot is character". Sarah Winman in When God Was a Rabbit, however, has decided to forego both. The characters, who could have been so interesting if fully formed, are half-baked, badly drawn, sketch outlines of characters, insipid and vapid, nothing substantial in them at all. The plot just isn't there.”
My advice to potential readers - Don’t.
The author is a theatre personality and the publishers seem to have published her book on the strength of her fame which they believed would make her fans buy her book. And they did. They also wrote rave reviews. Many of them love this book. And so many who didn’t know her before she became an author don’t.