WHEN GOD WAS A RABBIT is an incredibly exciting debut from an extraordinary new voice in fiction. Spanning four decades, from 1968 onwards, this is the story of a fabulous but flawed family and the slew of ordinary and extraordinary incidents that shape their everyday lives. It is a story about childhood and growing up, loss of innocence, eccentricity, familial ties and friendships, love and life. Stripped down to its bare bones, it’s about the unbreakable bond between a brother and sister.
“Everyone had a story of grief. Everyone else’s was worse than yours.”
I really, really, liked this book. The writing is witty and funny and sad and it’s so depressing when it ends. You want more. What happened next?
I think the true tell of a good storyteller is when you are always surprised about the twist and turns and can never really see what’s going to happen next.
I laughed out loud at the school audition for the nativity play, I cried at the aunts and uncles unrelated by blood that stayed at the quirky cottage. I cried when the bunny died. Spoiler: there is really a rabbit called God and unfortunately it dies.
And it was kinda magical.
“Do you think a rabbit could be God?’ I asked casually.
‘There is absolutely no reason at all why a rabbit should not be God.’
It was a story that was told in two parts, the first being when Elly and Joe were children, and the second being told years later as they are now adults.
“I divide my life into two parts. Not really a Before and After, more as if they are bookends, holding together flaccid years of empty musings, years of late adolescent or the twentysomething whose coat of adulthood simply does not fit.”
Elly and Joe, their family, and the friends they made along the way all captured my heart in a number of different ways and I found myself rooting for them right from the very beginning but also fearing for them because I wanted them all to be safe and okay forever. It’s crazy just how much happens in this one book. It spans four decades so that’s a lot of events to occur but this book just went on and on, in a really good way, so much so that I was scared because so much had happened to the characters in part one and I was scared of how much more these characters were going to go through before the story was finished.
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it? To stand apart and be different?’ he said.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, quite aware of my own muted need to fit in, somehow simply to hide. ‘I don’t want people to know I’m different.’”
My favourite aspect of this book was its portrayal of so many different relationships. The novel explores so many different kinds of love: platonic, familial, romantic and I’m glad that it wasn’t restricted to just one kind but all kinds. I laughed when Elly’s gay aunt kissed her mother and the family’s reaction was FINALLY! Or the woodworking dad who was always building something with his hands for his neighbours even though he had the financial means to help.
Then Ginger, an ex starlet comes to live with the family and Arthur, an old gay gentleman who knew when he was supposed to die and arranged his affairs so that his entire life fortune was set to last until his last breadth. I was laughing and crying when he said to Elly: “My money run out”. Meaning he lived longer than he thought he would.
“Do you believe in God, Arthur?” I said, eating the last piece of sponge.
“Do I believe in an old man in the clouds with a white beard judging us mortals with a moral code from one to ten? Good Lord no, my sweet Elly, I do not! Do I believe in a mystery; the unexplained phenomenon that is life itself? The greater something that illuminates inconsequence in our lives; that gives us something to strive for as well as the humility to brush ourselves down and start all over again? Then yes, I do. It is the source of art, of beauty, of love, and proffers the ultimate goodness to mankind. That to me is God. That to me is life. That is what I believe in.”
Elly’s friendship with Jenny Penny is also something to behold. Her unkempt hair as a child, her struggles with her mother and her string of boyfriends.. to the reveal she ended up in jail for killing her husband in the second half of the book.
I was also rooting for sporty brother Joe and his coming out and his romance with Charlie.
The book goes all the way to 9/11 and Joe goes missing when the two towers collapse. The family keeps hoping and as the days and the weeks roll by, he can’t be found and their hope diminishes. Elly spirals and has a very … let’s say descriptive sex scene with a stranger.
I won’t spoil the ending but everything was developed so naturally and beautifully that I cared deeply for every single character that appeared in this book.
“As I walked down I was overwhelmed with the gratitude of wellness. I walked out and breathed fresh air. I felt the sun on my skin. The world is a different place when you are well, when you are young. The world is beautiful and safe.”
One Book a Week (Julia Reads Books) 