The Constant Rabbit

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 morning’s copy of The Actual Truth, whose leader column’s outrage du jour was that unwashed foreign beggars were taking much-needed panhandling jobs from their hard-working British counterparts. ‘Worse.’ ‘Vegan foreigners who are also  . . . socialist?’ ‘No,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘rabbits!’

I'm a horrible liberal borderline-vegan person so I found this laugh out loud funny. I was reading the ebook and I have highlighted 23 huge sections.

"It wasn’t just foreigners or rabbits, either: they had an intense dislike for those whom they described as ‘spongers’ – again, a net that could be cast quite broadly but conveniently excluded those on a government pension, taken early – and other groups that they felt were deeply suspect, such as VW Passat drivers: ‘the car of smug lefties’. Added to that was anyone who was vegetarian, or wore sandals, or men with ‘overly vanitised’ facial hair – or women who wore dungarees, spoke loudly and had the outrageous temerity to suggest that their views might be relevant, or worse, correct."

I feel like the story went on a bit too long to sustain the metaphor but I enjoyed the heck out of this book anyway. I absolutely want to live in the world that the rabbits were trying to build.

‘Does vegan stew stir you somewhat in the nether regions, Peter?’ asked Doc. ‘It does us. Big time.’

This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

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 interesting discoveries await. My sense so far is that Fforde disapproves of xenophobia and wants to make sure the reader is aware of it... On. Every. Page. I kind of get it: there's an increasing number of people who might need to be reminded that nazis are bad, but unfortunately (1) those people don't read, and (2) the rest of us don't need to be conked on the head quite so much.