I actually vividly remember when this book first came out. I saw in in a bookshop window and laughed a little at the bizarre sounding title, thinking to myself that I should check it out someday. Then I forgot all about it and never got around to reading it, for a good long while until it popped up on my Amazon homepage a few months back. This time I had a little money and I remembered reading some vaguely good reviews a while back, so I bought a copy and settled down to read. I deliberately avoided reading reviews and comments about this in order to avoid being influenced, and I have to admit, it was a nice experience reading a book for the first time knowing absolutely nothing about it. It's not something I get to experience a lot now, and it's pleasant. Spoilers and full review below the cut:
When God Was A Rabbit is primarily, a story about love. It follows the life of Ellie and her beloved older brother Joe from children on a sleepy council estate, to adolescents living in the luxurious Cornwall countryside in a B&B populated by bizarre characters, to mildly successful and mostly confused adults living halfway around the world from each other. Ellie is a romantic, strange child whose best friends are her rabbit and her odd classmate Jenny Penny, whose disturbed home life hints at a level of complexity and subtle terror that seems to run as an undercurrent throughout the children's calm suburban lives.
The first part of the book focuses on Ellie's childhood and is narrated in her childish voice, lending an air of innocence and simpleness to the story that often obscures large parts of events in order to maintain an air of mystery. Ellie burdens her brother with a secret at a young age, and being only a child himself, he struggles to know how best to deal with it. All three children are outsides in one way or another, and this is dealt with in a remarkably realistic way. One of the things that definitely struck me about this book, and in particular the first section, was how real all of these characters feel. Growing up as an inner city kid, albeit several decades later, I could have sworn some of them used to live on my own childhood street even; Ellie, Joe, Jenny, their parents, friends and neighbours are all the kinds of characters who nobody would look twice at to pass them in the street. This contrasted sharply with the bizarre way in which Ellie's rabbit 'talks' to her and the uncanny predictions that come from Jenny all too often, but although this contrast has the potential to be jarring and uncomfortable, Sarah Winman makes it work incredibly well. Instead we are forced out of our comfort zones in familiar ways which make it all the worse. When a young Joe is forced to confront the fact that his more-than-a-friend Charlie is determined to keep him at arms length, when Jenny's mother is continually shown to be making terrible life choices despite the dependency of her young daughter, when Ellie's father breaks down and has doubts over his own life choices - these are the terrifyingly realistic moments of discomfort and fear, and the reader is forced to confront them head on exactly as the characters within the book are.
Part two of the novel jumps to adulthood and is narrated by the now grown Ellie, working as a Journalist. Joe has moved to New York and Jenny Penny has not been heard from in many years. The second part of this story does drag in places, losing some of the magic and innocence that young Ellie's narration lent to the novel to begin with. In return however, it is traded for some wonderfully in depth and beautiful passages, and further exploration of the effects and evolution of the young character's choices and problems as they continue to live. The climax of this novel took me somewhat by surprise, and I was slightly disappointed in that it seemed to be slight overkill. Everything bad that could possibly happen seems to happen to these characters at some point and it does become a little difficult to suspend belief after a certain point. However, if this can be managed, we are rewarded with a fantastic story with charming and compelling characters who hit the nail right on the head when it comes to emotional depth and exploration.
When God Was A Rabbit ultimately impressed me with it's realistic portrayal of the ways in which people must deal with bad things. All terrible situations, whether that is a straightforward and clean cut bad thing thing like a broken family life, the death of a stranger, a terrorist attack, or a complex and difficult bad thing such as being forced to question the moral goodness of one who was once considered a friend, or the question of love being able to prevail even in the most difficult of circumstances, all must be dealt with in one way or another. Families rebuild, people heal as best they can and life must go on, no matter what. It is that, slightly uncomfortable yet hopeful feeling, that this book manages to capture best.
I would recommend this book, and I would give it 4 stars out of 5
- Natalie XOX
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