When God Was a Rabbit: A Book Review

This is a book about a brother and a sister.

It's a book about childhood and growing up, friendships and families, triumph and tragedy and everything in between. 

More than anything, it's a book about love in all its forms. 

By Sarah Winman

I'm not going to say this was my favourite to read. Quite honestly, I only finished it because I know that you can learn something even from the things you don’t like. So, I read it. I read it near every night before bed, one chapter (or more) per night. Though towards the end I read it in 2 or 3 large chunks because I needed to finish it before I went back to uni for my final 3 weeks.

So, the book. The last line of its synopsis is right, it does explore love in all its forms. It looks at the different relationships that the narrator (Elly) has. Come to think of it, the book is about a girl/woman who never quite fits in, whose family/friends never quite fit in. a girl whose emotions and feelings ate very different from the norm portrayed in most books and films. It is quite refreshing to have this alternative perspective really. Sarah Winman does very well to show/describe the world in a very different way. A new perspective.

I don’t like all of the subject matter of the book, but that’s purely down to my upbringing which in comparison to the family presented in this book is very much more conservative. I also didn’t appreciate the ways in which religious people were portrayed and I felt that it was a very much cynical unrepresented view. Though I can understand the vitality of the characters for the formation of Elly’s character.

I did like how the rawness of human emotion was shown. It felt very real and in the back of the book the author wrote how some of the scenes were actually from her own life. My favourite part was the end part when Elly’s relationship with her brother is completely changed. For me I felt it was long needed as it made finally displayed her self-centredness (if that’s a word), but also his own.

The book didn’t make me feel much whilst reading it, I didn’t form any connections with the characters as I couldn’t relate to any of them in any way really. But I can definitely appreciate the raw emotions that are represented in this book. It is a different perspective of looking at life, one that is definitely not my own. And for that reason alone, I think the book is worth a read.