watership down
just finished reading it last night - was very good. it's also admittedly very much of its time; ie very 1970's england with its dodgy ethnic stereotypes and practically nonexistant female characters...but still a very good story.
my only real criticism is with the ending. first off, there were two endings, and it only needed one. the epilogue where the jesus rabbit el-ahrairah takes hazel off to join his owsla was poignant and everything, but it felt forced and manipulative. and it took away from possibly the best ending for a book i've ever read: 'underground, the story continued.' that's where the book should have ended - on watership down, with all the rabbits living in peace and prosperity and hazel and his band of brothers enjoying the life they had worked so hard for.
second, the ending on the hill should have been between hazel and fiver. the story started with them; it should end with them. i liked dandelion and silver and pipkin and everyone else, sure; but the story's real central relationship was between hazel and fiver. bigwig's ending was excellent and fit his character perfectly. but fiver?...well, i got the feeling that he'd become one of those war veterans who's not quite right in the head, as hazel and the others seemed to be avoiding him at the end. the ending should have been hazel and fiver having a nice quiet chat at evening silflay, maybe asking each other whether it was all worth it and deciding that it was, costs and all.
anyway, other points: i'm glad i read/saw the lord of the rings before i read this, because it made the british army officer/footman relationship between hazel and bigwig stand out very clearly and make a lot of sense. i had trouble picturing a lot of the scenery as exactly as adams described it, because, as i mentioned in another post, he seems blithely convinced that his readership knows exactly what nettlewort and monkey's bum and toadstool prick and a host of other native english flora look and smell like. i also think he lost sight of the book's central relationship, as i said, and got rather enamored with bigwig towards the end. and so did i, really; but i would have liked to see hazel and fiver have a scene or two together instead of fiver just being brushed out of the way.
anyway, i enjoyed it a lot. and now that i've read the book, i might just decide to give the movie another chance now that i'm a grownup and not so easily traumatized by the sight of wee cartoon bunnies ripping each other to shreds (i read each chapter dreading the scene where one of them would get ripped to pieces by the big mean rabbit, and was relieved when it didn't happen...first i was sure it would be fiver, then holly, and then blackavar, and was surprised when it was bigwig. that's the scene i'm thinking of, surely? i haven't seen the movie since i was a kid, but i vividly remember one rabbit ripping apart a smaller rabbit who was already very beaten up. i spit on the animators' graves for inflicting that image upon sensitive and overly-empathetic young minds. puh-tooie!).
ahem. moving on. i know powell's has a few copies of the sequel tales from watership down, and i'm contemplating spending some hard-earned bucks (ha!) for a used copy. anyone read it? i'm sure it's not as cohesive as the novel since it's a collection of short stories, but still, is it worth the green?
Q
many thanks to the unwitting crew of fanciable british actors who made up the cast list in my imagination, without whom the book wouldn't have been half as enjoyable :)