Watership Down--Richard Adams
reviewed by jenn walker 8.25.04
I’ve
recently finished reading Watership Down, again. Were I ever forced to pick
a favorite book (and let’s pray it never comes to that) I’d have
to go with Watership Down. (For the record, it would win in the “Single
Entity” category, and I’d insist there also be a category for “Favorite
Trilogy” to save a place for Professor Tolkien.)
My copy of Richard Adam’s bunny book has warped pages from the time I dropped it while reading in the tub. It’s labeled “Jenny Walker” on the inside. There are stickers I added to the front, and notes on the inside cover. At some point I covered the whole thing in clear contact paper. The book is a portable shrine, containing the same stunning tale that kept the ten year old me reading on the front step, unable to put the book down long enough to go inside.
The story is classic, familiar, breath taking. A group of rabbits escape the destruction of their warren, and flee to a new life on Watership Down. Well, that’s the one sentence summary. It’s Odysseus, it’s Robin Hood, it’s every adventure you’ve ever loved, wrapped into one. There’s a psychic, a warrior, a brainiac, a storyteller, and a leader worth dying for. There are evil doers, both men and rabbits who act like men.
Now, I should admit, I’m a girl attached to rabbits, and I’ll tell you further that my own band of plush bunnies makes me giggle, and I am not a giggler. Richard Adams didn’t write a cute story. I swear on a stack of my favorite books and my stuffed bunnies, it’s devoid of cuteness. These rabbits are not cuddly, they aren’t fluffy, and noses barely twitch.
I’ve read this book dozens of times, I know the plot lines, the proverbs, and almost every last primrose. Words I’ve known for decades still leap out, and I’m still impressed by depth of understanding Adams has for the land his rabbits patrol; every insect, every plant a rabbit might eat or hide under, richly detailed in simple prose. The yellowhammers sing, the stoats prowl, and men stomp across the ground, burning white sticks in their mouths.
I come back to this book, like a secure burrow, in times of stress, or change. In the life of a Watership For the rabbits, a routine is settled in a matter of days or pages. They live hard lives, live by their wits and a faith in “the indestructible flood of Rabbitry.” Stories, food, shelter, friends, survival, these make a good day.
What’s not to love?