The Constant Rabbit

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.”