When God was a rabbit

Sarah Winman

Book - 2011

Traces the evolving bond of love and secrets between a woman and her brother, a relationship marked by family ties in Europe and America, a secretive friend, and historical events from more than three decades.

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FICTION/Winman, Sarah
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Subjects
Published
New York : Bloomsbury 2011.
Language
English
Main Author
Sarah Winman (-)
Edition
1st U.S. ed
Physical Description
296 p. ; 22 cm
ISBN
9781608195343
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

WHY do good things happen to bad people? For some of us, this is one of life's big questions, bigger perhaps than those all-stars: What makes Iago evil? How can a country justify firing both missiles and schoolteachers? The undeserved job promotion, the bequest without cause, the random assigning of accolades or attention: when unmerited rewards are doled out to others, some of us are capable of descending into decades of moping. Thus it's refreshing to read a book that causes us to ask that question's obverse - the more traditional, Why do bad things happen to good people? Such a book is Sarah Winman's wonderful, darkly comic first novel, "When God Was a Rabbit." Starting in England during the 1960s and '70s, then moving on to New York before and after 9/11, the book is primarily the story of its English narrator and heroine, Elly, and in particular her intense and loving relationships with her brother, Joe, and her very strange best friend, Jenny Penny. The misfortunes heaped on all three are outsize and seemingly never-ending. Job, in comparison, may have gotten off easy. The troubles begin when Elly's grandparents die in a bus crash, sending her mother into a long and deep depression. Then Elly learns that she was the result of an unplanned pregnancy and starts to ask a lot of questions about her creator. "If this God couldn't love me," she resolves, "then it was clear I'd need to find another one that could." This new divine entity is encountered some time later, after she tells her brother that she's been sexually abused by their neighbor, Mr. Golan. "I'll get you a proper friend," her brother declares, as he holds her "in the darkness, as defiant as granite." The new friend Joe finds for his sister turns out to be a Belgian hare, a pet she names "God," who sometimes talks to her. Although Joe swears never to reveal Elly's dark secret about their neighbor, it turns out to be mere prelude to total eclipse: the mentally disturbed Mr. Golan (who has lied about being a Holocaust survivor) commits suicide. And we're only up to Page 27, kids! Remarkably, "When God Was a Rabbit" never feels melodramatic or unkind to its characters. Much of this has to do with Winman's mastery of tone: the narration is dry-eyed but glinting. Of Jenny Penny and her vagabond mother's home, Winman writes, "They lived in a temporary world . . . that could be broken up and reassembled as easily and as quickly as Lego. Fabric hung from most walls in staggered strips, and around the door frame was a pattern of flowered handprints in pinks and reds that in the dingy light looked like the bloodied hands of a crime scene searching for an exit." Winman simultaneously captures the occasionally overwrought self-consciousness of childhood and gently satirizes it. Young Elly quotes Nietzsche at the family dinner table and auditions for the school Nativity play with a monologue about needing money for an abortion and gin. The proceedings are also leavened by the fact that the supporting characters fare much better than the children. Elly's parents win a lot of money in the football pools, allowing the family to relocate to a huge house in Cornwall. Elly's lesbian aunt, Nancy, meets with much approbation, both as a film actress and as the family's unofficial guardian angel. Though "When God Was a Rabbit" is studded with era-specific references like the Tet Offensive and the shooting of John Lennon, Winman is, with the exception of a 9/11 plotline late in the book, ultimately less interested in historical resonance than in developing complicated relationships between believable characters. This is the kind of book in which a husband, on learning that his sister has consummated a longtime crush on his wife by kissing her, responds: "At last! At least we've got that out of the way." Such moments give the book the feel of real life, which may cause the reader to be caught unawares, as I was, by its heart-rending conclusion. Winman has an authorial tendency to pick at life's proverbial scabs. But while her plot traffics heavily in grim incident, she maintains a winning proportion of whimsy throughout. At the very least, she's created the most amusing and emotionally satisfying work of rabbit deism to come down the pike in a long time. I give it five carrots. Sarah Winman's child heroine quotes Nietzsche at the dinner table. Henry Alford is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. His book about manners will be published in January.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 5, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Elly never feels complete without her older brother, Joe. It's Joe who learns what happened between 5-year-old Elly and the 80-year-old man next door, marking her life, and then gets her a proper friend, a large Belgian hare Joe names God, which comforts Elly until the rabbit's untimely death. Solitary English children, Elly and Joe each find, then lose, a fast friend. Charlie, Joe's rugby mate, whom, when a teen, he loves deeply, moves to Dubai with his divorced father, and Jenny Penny, Elly's quirky schoolmate, is left behind after Elly and Joe's family moves to Cornwall. Both will be found again as the years progress to Elly's midthirties. But no bare-bones plot summary can do justice to this wonderfully wise and compellingly readable tale of love and friendship in all their forms, of family uncircumscribed by biological bonds, and of loss worse than death all laced with humor that can border on black. In crisp prose, English actress Winman vividly limns the characters, including Elly playing the blind innkeeper and Jenny the octopus in their school's Christmas pageant; Arthur, the boarder who becomes kin, with his yogi's prediction of when and how he will die; and the tortured aftermath of 9/11. A remarkable first novel, worth savoring.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Winman debuts with a heartbreaking story of the secrets and hopes of a sister and brother who share an unshakable bond. Elly and her older brother, Joe, appear to be just like all the other kids in mid-1970s Essex, U.K., but, as is often the case, shocking secrets lurk below the surface for the siblings and Elly's best friend, Jenny Penny-one has been sexually abused, another has an alcoholic and promiscuous mother, another is homosexual-and the weight of bearing each other's traumas erupts in hard to watch ways. As the years go on, each moves forward; for Elly and Joe, this is more easily accomplished, as their family moves away from Essex and Joe's secret is brought to light, relief Elly doesn't receive until much later. As the story winds through time and across the Atlantic, the trio and their families are rocked by 9/11, leading to a final twist that strains belief before settling into acceptable inevitability. Winman shows impressive range and vision in breaking out of the muted coming-of-age mold, and the narrative's intensity will appeal to readers who like a little gloom. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Over a 30-year time span, Elly and her older brother, Joe, experience everything the late 20th century has to throw at them, from child molestation to marital upheaval, cancer, and, finally, the terror of 9/11. Joe goes down the rabbit hole of depression when he loses the early love of his life, Charlie, who is abducted and tortured after his father gets a contract to work in the Middle East. When Elly also suffers the loss of a neighborhood friend, Joe comforts her with the gift of a pet Belgian hare whom they decide to call "God." Their father's big win in the football pools transforms the family from middle-class suburbanites to wealthy eccentrics as they leave their familiar Essex surroundings and move to a wooded estate in Cornwall. VERDICT Despite the gravity of events, Winman pulls a good number of rabbits from her hat in a picaresque coming-of-age tale where characters disappear then shockingly reappear. This affecting and original debut is recommended for most public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, 11/22/10.]--Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.