Allison's Book Bag

For our family’s summer reading selection, I picked the mammoth four-hundred-page Watership Down by Richard Adams. Some novels will feel like an endurance test just four pages in. Without fail, whenever I read Watership Down, those four hundred pages feel to me like a summer holiday. My husband, who groaned at the idea of reading such a long book about rabbits, instead has eagerly returned to the book whenever he has a spare minute.

“The rabbits arrived at their new home – but I’m not even halfway through the book,” my husband observed. “What in the world can happen next?” Richard Adams never ceases to amaze me with how he handles pacing. On the surface, his rabbit tale is a fairly simple one: rabbits must escape their doomed warren and find a new home. In less capable hands, Watership Down would have been half as long and packed with chases, storms, brawls, and catastrophes. But Adams never hurries his tale. Often he stops to leisurely describe the scenery or to wax philosophical. Sometimes he even dedicates an entire chapter to a rabbit folktale. Yet these interludes rarely feel like interruptions; rather, these interesting descriptions, musings, and stories of the rabbit god Frith and the great trickster El-ahrairah increase the momentum. Adams also never resorts to implausible plot twists. Instead he is perfectly content to tell his simple tale and trust his readers to listen—and so we do.

I am astounded at how imperfect and yet captivating are Adams’ rabbits. Take Fiver, a runt who has been blessed with the gift of prophecy. Then there is Fiver’s older brother, Hazel, whose greatest strength is his ability to identify and trust the strengths of others. By speaking with conviction of his trust in his brother’s visions of doom, he convinces a small band of rabbits to leave the warren and seek a new home. Yet even he also makes errors in judgment. One day to prove his greatness as a leader, despite desperate warnings from Fiver, Hazel sets out to rescue pet rabbits from a nearby farm – and almost meets a violent end. Darker characters also exist. For example, let me introduce you to Strawberry who lives in a different warren. He hides a dark secret, which almost becomes the downfall of one of Hazel’s companions. Despite his betrayal, he eventually joins Hazel’s warren and becomes a great asset. And then there is Captain Holly. One of the powerful elite at the Sandleford warren, he attempts to arrest Hazel and his fellow rabbits to prevent them from leaving the warren. After failing to do so, he later seeks refuge at Hazel’s new warren and becomes a valued contributor. These rabbits are fallible, allowing Adams to present many stirring moments of heartache and redemption.

Adams considered the Berkshire countryside to also be a character in Watership Down. He certainly lavishes great attention to it. In a random survey which I conducted of twenty books for young people, over half of them dedicated their first paragraph to introducing character. And by character, I mean a human being or least an animal. Half of the books didn’t refer to setting until the second paragraph or even the second page. And when they did, they often only dedicated one sentence to description. A particularly generous author may perhaps devote an entire early paragraph to setting. In contrast, Adams spends the first three paragraphs on the landscape. That’s not to say Adams wastes time waxing poetic. In each paragraph, he details the scenery but also the place of the rabbits within it: “The May sunset was red in clouds and there was still half an hour to twilight. The dry slope was dotted with rabbits—some nibbling at their grass….” Those paragraphs might be long, but they effectively establish a tone of peace, which within a few pages is quietly interrupted. Readers are all the richer for how saturated in reality Watership Down really is.

“No author today would think of writing a four-hundred-page book about rabbits,” my husband observed. Adams himself did not begin with such an audacious goal; Watership Down started out as story told by Adams to his daughters on car rides. As the years went on, his daughters encouraged him to share his story with the world, and finally he took the plunge and set the tale to paper. But Watership Down received so many rejections that Adams considered publishing it himself. Then a small-time publisher named Rex Collins accepted it for a two thousand copy run. Since that time it has rightfully sold millions of copies.

My rating? Bag it: Carry it with you. Make it a top priority to read.

How would you rate this book?

Related Posts

• Daily Teasers for Watership Down
• Tales from Watership Down

Twenty years after the publication of Watership Down, Adams blessed the world with nineteen more tales about his beloved rabbits. In a pocket-sized volume called Tales from Watership Down, Adams once again proves himself a master storyteller.

Tales from Watership Down is divided into three parts. In the first section, readers are treated to five traditional stories about the rabbit hero El’ahrairah (“The Prince with a Thousand Enemies”). The second section contains four stories specifically about El’ahrairah and his stalwart companion Rabscuttle; these being about their long journey home from their terrible encounter with the Black Rabbit of Inle. In the final section, readers hear about further adventures of Hazel and his rabbits, which take place the year immediately following the defeat of General Woundwort.

As I wanted most to read about Hazel and his rabbits, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the traditional tales and how felt sad that were only five of them. My favorite is The Sense of Smell, wherein El’ahrairah bravely seeks out the dangerous Ilips, who live in a cave and who hold the power to bestow rabbits with the ability to smell. Upon discovering that they have given it away, El’ahrairah ventures into the unknown Land of Yesterday and Land of Tomorrow, hoping to find someone who can grant his wish. The other four tales are much shorter, but just as entertaining and wise

In this section are also two tales told by a couple of Hazel’s rabbits about their own adventures. I’m not sure why they weren’t placed in part three. At any rate, I liked the story told by newcomer Coltsfoot about a rabbit ghost, of all things. It felt creepy and sad, but had a happy ending in that Coltsfoot adjusted to the warren after being courageous enough to share his story. I didn’t care for the nonsensical story narrated by Speedwell.

Again, to my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed the extra stories in about El’ahrairah and Rabscuttle and their encounter with the Black Rabbit of Inle. Adams could probably sell an entire volume about these trickster rabbits! The first and fourth stories are not connected. One is about a maze that the two enter upon encouragement by Greenweed, who refers to it as a game. Readers who have read Watership Down will know all too readily that things are rarely as they seem. The other standalone story is about how El’ahrairah and Rabscuttle strike a bargain with a badger to forage for him as long as he sees fit. in exchange, he promises to escort them through a forest which stands in their way of going home. El’ahrairah and Rabscuttle soon learn one should never agree to do something indefinitely. As for the two interconnected stories, in them El’ahrairah and Rabscuttle help a warren of rabbits escape from rats. Be forewarned: These are pretty gruesome tales.

The last section is why I originally bought Tales from Watership Down. Except for the first tale, it didn’t disappoint me. The first is a narration by Hyzenthlay. It’s about a mysterious river that a few of the does discovered while at Efrafan. Given the tight security of the place, the idea seems implausible. Also, by this point in the book, I felt anxious to read real in-the-moment tales about Hazel and his rabbits, not just a recounting by a storyteller of past escapades. Apparently, Adams received criticism for his lack of female characters in Watership Down. In his extra volume, he makes up for this by having a chief female rabbit and other strong female leads who have awe-inspiring adventures. While all eight stories in the third part include beloved characters from Watership Down, the hero (or heroine) is often a new rabbit whom I came to appreciate as much as the regulars. One of my favorite chapters, however, is about Campion—who took over Efrafan after the demise of General Woundwort.

As you can see, Tales from Watership Down contains quite the assortment. I loved dipping my feet once again into Adams’ perfect world.

My rating? Read it: Borrow from your library or a friend. It’s worth your time.

How would you rate these books?

Related Posts

• Daily Teasers for Watership Down
• Watership Down