The Constant Rabbit

A Novel

hardcover, 307 pages

Published Sept. 29, 2020 by Viking.

ISBN:
978-0-593-29652-3
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4 stars (19 reviews)

"A new stand-alone novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Early Riser and the Thursday Next series England, 2022. There are 1.2 million human-size rabbits living in the UK. They can walk, talk, drive cars, and they like to read Voltaire, the result of an Inexplicable Anthropomorphizing Event fifty-five years before. A family of rabbits is about to move into Much Hemlock, a cozy little village in Middle England where life revolves around summer fetes, jam making, gossipy corner stores, and the oh-so-important Best Kept Village awards. No sooner have the rabbits arrived than the villagers decide they must depart, citing their propensity to burrow and breed, and their shameless levels of veganism. But Mrs Constance Rabbit is made of sterner stuff, and her and her family decide they are to stay. Unusually, their neighbors--longtime resident Peter Knox and his daughter, Pippa--decide to stand with them . . …

4 editions

Review of 'The Constant Rabbit' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars






I just read Jasper Fforde books. He writes them, I pick them up, and I read them. I don't even read the synopsis. That has never served me so well as it did here. I was overjoyed when a book that starts with synchronized volunteer speed-librarying ends up introducing anthropomorphized rabbits into the mix.Turns out that in the 1960s in England there was an incident. For some reason a few rabbits turned human sized and able to talk. They are also smarter than humans. Humans for the most part didn't like this.This book is a satire of British politics. Take any outsider group in England - Muslim/Polish/Immigrant/Foreigner - and substitute in Giant Rabbit instead. It really points out the absurdity of right wing ideas.
















‘Who?’ ‘Them,’ she added, no more helpfully. ‘Vegans?’ ‘No, not vegans,’ she said, eyes opening wide, ‘worse than that.’ ‘Foreigners?’ I asked, catching sight of that …

Review of 'The Constant Rabbit' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Abandoned, p.40. Didn't even make it to a-hundred-minus-my-age. What I love about Fforde's previous books is the gradual discovery of new worlds: Fforde gives us a quirky twist on reality but writes from the perspective of an insider, one who takes that world for granted. The reader has time to wonder about this universe, and the author gradually fills in details, often just out of the corner of the eye so more questions remain.

Constant Rabbit — at least up to page 40 — has none of that. We are spoon-fed the quirk ("Something handwavy happened. Rabbits are now human-sized, can speak English and otherwise fully participate in human society") and the plot ("Do they deserve any rights?") and a heavyhanded story comprising a lot of bullies and one spineless milquetoast narrator. The reader (at least this reader) feels no curiosity about the details of this mean-spirited world, about what …

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