Watership Down

I read this a long time ago when I was raising bunnies in my backyard. Then I got another book about Adams and his writing (wish I could remember the name of it). He did a lot of rabbit research so the nature of his bunnies was quite accurate. I'll never forget when my own rabbits went "tharn." I need to find another copy of this book and re-read it, because what I remember most is how much I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I agree - it somehow avoids the usual mawkishness of anthropomorphism. It's a truly great book but Richard Adams sure is a strange man. Maybe it took someone with his particular take on life to be able to write something so extraordinary.

'Watership Down' is a great character-driven book, laced with social commentary that is neither heavy-handed nor prescriptive. Strawberry's warren, for instance, is a chilling metaphor for *something* - I'm not sure what - with its artistically inclined inhabitants who accept frequent, cruel deaths among their number in exchange for a leisurely, well-fed life, and refuse to even talk about death or anyone who has died.

It's about bunnies, sure, but clever, wild, vulnerable bunnies, ready to fight and kill and make a run for it. These are cool bunnies, and their situation is as close to the human condition in the 21st century as anything I've read - constantly on the lookout for the 'Elil', meaning, literally, 'the thousand', figuratively, 'the enemy'.

But I like this most, I think, because in the age of Harry Potter and Buffy, it's not a story driven by a central protagonist who will overcome all odds and model human resilience. It's about a team, or a family, each with their own skills (some mystical - Fiver is a seer, for instance) and sticking points, in much the same way X-Men is, and who cannot survive without cooperating. It's a better model for survival and making the most of life than narratives which encourage you to uncompromisingly and greedily pursue your dreams no matter what.