When I rescued this book from the “table of unwanted items”
in my building it was more beaten up than Bigwig after his big showdown with
General Woundwort. It was worth rescuing it. Not that, unsurprisingly, its
state improved after being put in my bike bag and taken to work every day this
week!
As an adventure book Watership
Down is just great. It’s got tales of heroic bravery, suspense and
friendship. From that point of view it ranks up there with Treasure Island, Around the
World in 80 Days and The Lost World in
terms of children’s (or at least young adults’) literature. The problem,
though, is that, even in this case, I could have really done without magic and
folklore: I didn’t care for the stories passed down from generation to
generation of rabbits, and I would have liked Fiver a lot better had he not had
extra-sensory perception!
Sure, only bucks appear to have a prominent role and does
take very much the back seat, but I really don’t see it as too much of a
problem and I don’t read too much of a macho message into it (maybe because I’m
a man!).
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