The Rabbit Back Literature Society

I'm much more into ‘depressing reality' than ‘magical realism'. This book entwined the two and I'm not sure how to feel about it. I wouldn't insist anyone has to read it. But there were very enjoyable moments in here. Oh, and I guess it helps if you have a general understanding of the Finn. Which is a phenomenon hard to describe.

“When she'd returned to Rabbit Back, Ella had consisted of lovely curving lips, faulty ovaries, and a future as a language and literature teacher.”
“Falling in love with a person's momentary being was as irrational as falling in love with the left side of his face, or the back of his head, or some other individual part of him.”
“She had ridden her bike to the school one Monday morning and before she knew it the breeze had wiped away thirteen years of her life.”

What an odd book. I can't really explain how I felt about it - it was definitely readable and interesting at the time, but after I'd finished it just felt a bit, “Well, what was the point of that?”

I was hoping this book would be mostly about the book “virus”, where books alter themselves and infect each other. Unfortunately, it ended up being about other things entirely - to the point where the book virus played no part and needn't have existed at all.

This is a strange tale of a literature society. I was fascinated and at times disgusted but it kept me reading until the very last little twist. Children see the world so much different than adults.

Curious but disappointing.

Expectations often kill a book for me, and that's what I think happened with Rabbit Back Literature Society. Publishers, I urge you, don't paste a huge endorsement for the book on the front cover in which you compare the book to another, long-treasured book (The Secret History). I promise you, you just can't live up to that hype. I didn't hate it; in fact, I might have loved it, had I gone into it with smaller hopes. A charming little premise, with lots of minor weavings and wobblings along the road, and with occasional trips into the ditch.