The Constant Rabbit

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.

Delightfully absurd.

Jasper gives us a somewhat regular world, but there happen to be anthropomorphic animals. Not that many.

Our POV character is mostly not terrible but also doesn't want to rock the boat. It's easier to not let it be known that we don't hate rabbits, right? As long as we, personally, aren't bad to rabbits, we are still good, right?

The whole story is an exploration in identity politics and what it means to be “in” and “out” group. The audiobook is well narrated with distinct voices for characters, making the story even more captivating.

I like thought provoking fiction, and I enjoyed this one.

Side note: The rabbit way mythos is all quite fascinating, and I super enjoy how solidly Jasper grounded this. I know it is all a part of authorship and practically essential to make your characters behave, but sometimes story mythology/religion that is entirely made up feels, well, incomplete. This one didn't.

Absurd tale involving anthropomorphized rabbits and other creatures used to make social/political commentary. Obvious commentary is not my favorite thing but this was truly funny and the characters are vivid. It felt very “British” to me. (This is subjective; I don't have a set of standards to explain what makes me think so.) Not that the US doesn't face similar social/political issues, or that I couldn't relate but I get the sense if I'd grown up in the U.K. it would have had a different impact on me.

The narrator, Peter Knox is a fearful, nervous, and mild-mannered middle-aged man who desperately needs to keep his job, even if he doesn't agree with the morality of the place he works for. In other words: relatable. Peter feels powerless amidst all the absurdity around him and needs to be pushed to take a stand. Most of the tension revolves around anti-rabbit groups vs. rabbit activists, populated by characters that appear much more sure of themselves than Peter, and Peter's romantic feelings for a female rabbit named Connie.

There's a lot of jokes in the book I would consider to be “meta,” including the Event that caused the animals to morph in the first place. One of the suggested explanations of this Event is “satire” as though satire were a force of nature rather than a literary concept. There's also the running gag of making fun of the author's last name and the sly references to Dr. Seuss's Fox in Socks. All of this is to say that Fforde never lets you get “lost” in the story; you're always aware of the devices.

It's a fun novel, very entertaining, even if I do feel a bit lectured at times.

“The decent humans are generally supportive of doing the right thing,' said the Venerable Bunty, ‘but never take it much farther than that. You're trashing the ecosystem for no reason other than a deluded sense of anthropocentric manifest destiny, and until you stop talking around the issue and actually feel some genuine guilt, there'll be no change.' ‘Shame, for want of a better word, is good,' said Finkle. ‘Shame is right, shame works. Shame is the gateway emotion to increased self-criticism, which leads to realisation, an apology, outrage and eventually meaningful action.”

Once again, I marvel at how Jasper Fforde is able to come up with a wholly original, completely absurd idea, and it make it feel plausible and real. The satire was a little heavy-handed, but given the state of the world we live in now, it also feels applicable and necessary. I enjoyed this more than Early Riser, but not as much as Shades of Grey or the Thursday Next series – maybe about the same level as the Nursery Crime books for me.

This was so good. Fforde is amazing at taking weird ideas and making them not just work, but be great. The allegory (not quite the word I'm looking for, but it'll do) is a little rough in places, but the story more than makes up for it. There's so much discussed in one way or another, from segregation/racism to climate change. The end made me cry a bit. I think the main thing is: “Sometimes it takes a non-human to say what it is to be a good human.”

Pretty decent satire I guess, although not exactly a subtle one, and occasionally funny. But Fforde is a little too enamored of his own cleverness, and the characters are either one dimensional (the fox is viciously cruel, the weasel is deceitful) or basically ciphers (the relationship between Peter and his daughter Pippa is never fully developed so the ramifications of Pippa's actions don't strike much of a chord). I was a big fan of the author from his Thursday Next series ([b:The Eyre Affair 27003 The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next, #1) Jasper Fforde https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1445540555l/27003.SY75.jpg 3436605], et al) but I think I'm ready to move on.

Thoroughly enjoyed it but I didn't feel it had the same creativity present in some of Jasper's other series. It instead went with drawing some darker parallels to how we treat minority groups within society.