Sarah Winman - When God was a Rabbit

review by Ro Bennett on show 30th June

I bought this book because I liked the title and the book cover was attractive. It has had some excellent reviews but I personally found it bland and irritating and I skimmed through much of it. I did finish it because I kept hoping that it would improve, but for me it wasn’t a page turner, it didn’t grip me at all. I didn’t enjoy it and I wouldn’t recommend it.

When I first started reading it I thought, ‘Well, the author is obviously a gay actress and this is like reading a pamphlet advocating and defending gay and theatrical life styles. I really don’t care whether people are gay, straight, theatrical or conventional but I would have presumed and have preferred that the theatrical, bizarre and alternative would have grabbed my attention and I would have found it interesting and absorbing reading - but it didn’t happen. It was so obvious and full of cliché that it became tedious and I found it a tad seedy.

Elly is the narrator. Her brother Joe is gay and tormented, her father is a guilt ridden lawyer living with the angst of having defended a guilty paedophile and the subsequent suicide of his victim, Nancy his sister is a gay actress who reckons that Katherine Hepburn shoved her up against a wall and snogged her, quote ‘tongues and all’ - then explains that it wasn’t THE Katharine Hepburn... Elly’s mother loves her husband but Elly sees her snog Nancy - once again quote ‘tonges as well’ with all that implies. The neighbour is a paedolphile who abuses Elly who is consequently screwed up, her friend Jenny Penny (who I want to call Henny Penny) is abused by her mother’s boyfriend and goes on to murder an abusive partner, the brother Joe’s gay lover is kidnapped and incarcerated in Lebanon and has an ear cut off before he is released when a ransom is paid, and Joe is involved in the 9/11 tragedy and feared dead but is conveniently found with amnesia.

There is male lodger who is theatrical and gay, a female lodger who is theatrical and bizarre, the theatrical bizarre one dies of breast cancer - so it was jammed packed with stuff but I didn’t develop an emotional connection with any of the characters and the countless emotional crises and traumas left me cold.

Now I sound like a grumpy old woman!! The only good thing about it as far as I’m concerned was that I got it half price - though I would have preferred to have bought it for 20p in the Charity shop!
Ro Bennett