Watership Down: A Novel
by Richard Adams
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.22 You Save: $9.78 (58%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.79 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Watership Down: A Novel
Book Review: Watership Down Review
Summary: 5 Stars
Author: Richard Adams
Book: Watership Down
Publisher: Scribner; Reprint edition
This 476 page book was a long read but it was worth it with its twists, turns and immense detail. You'll never want to put it down, I know I didn't.
In Watership Down by Richard Adams a bunch of rabbits must make their way through the dangers in their life if they are to survive. They have to find a new home, one where they can live free, happily and with no humans. When they finally do make it to that place there are only male rabbits in there group so now they have to find they females that are held up in the Efrafa bunker like rabbit society without getting killed by both animal and human alike.
My most favorite parts are where Dandelion tells the stories about El-ahrairah rabbit. He was the chief rabbit to begin with in the very beginning of the story. He is their so called "Adam". They stories add a better twist to the book. I love all of the adventures he has. My most favorite story of his would have to be The King's Lettuce. It was a very crafty plan.
I thought that the theme of the story was finding your safe haven in life isn't always the easiest thing to do.
In the book Watership Down by Richard Adams the part that I liked best was the whole book. I wouldn't want Adams to change anything about the book. Maybe add a sequel to it is about it. I don't recommend this to people who don't like reading or animals. This book is a really long one and the main characters are rabbits.
Book Review: In a world of a thousand enemies, I'd live underground too.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a story about totally ordinary rabbits. For all we know, all rabbits may act like these when confronted with difficult situations, only we have not noticed. Maybe they travel in slightly bigger groups and are slightly more fearless than we're used to seeing, but there's nothing that differentiates these rabbits from those that live in your backyard. This story takes place in a totally ordinary setting in the author's part of rural England. The imaginative part of this novel is how the various rabbit characters interact during their exodus from their native warren until they find a new home.
The prophecy of Fiver, the resourcefulness of Hazel, the strength of Bigwig, these are the characteristics that keep the Sandleford rabbits moving even as they encounter enemies in the form of dogs, foxes, men, and the dreaded automobile. The name of the legendary patriarch of all rabbits "El-ahrairah" says it all - in Lapine, it means "he of a thousand enemies." During their journey, the rabbits tell stories of his cunning to keep themselves and the reader entertained.
This book is for everyone. Its insights on trust, friendship, and community are priceless. It is filled with adventure, suspense, ingenuity, and humor. Rabbit behavior is true to nature, according to R. M. Lockley's The Private Life of the Rabbit. The reading level is not complicated, and there is a glossary for those of us who don't speak Lapine. Highly recommended.
Book Review: Highly Recommend This Book
Summary: 5 Stars
This book has outlasted many favourite-books-of-the-moment in my life. I continually come back to it, rereading it with great pleasure each time. It's the kind of book where you suddenly feel the need to read passages aloud.
On the surface, a simple tale of talking rabbits. Yet I would never classify it as children's literature. An adventure with heroes and villians, peril and friendship, but it's even more than that. There is a subtext that can be interpreted to represent issues about government and society.
Yet at the same time, the rabbits seem very realistic. Not just humans in rabbit form. Most have trouble with complicated concepts, ie. when they need to cross a river and two of the rabbits are too tired to swim, only one rabbit understands the concept of hitching a ride on a piece of wood to float across. They also encounter a rabbit warren that is more intellectually advanced, having created art and poetry. The main characters have trouble grasping these concepts.
The characters are well-developed, as is the rabbit culture they come from. They are very much like primitive people, with an oral tradition of mythology but little concept of anything outside their own life. They see everything; other animals, plants, structures, etc as how it relates to themselves.
It's a book that can be read on many levels. Adventure or allegory, everyone can take something from this story. I highly recommend it.
Book Review: who knew rabbits had it in them?
Summary: 5 Stars
it didn't hurt that the edition i bought was the one by Puffin Books--the one with the cute brown rabbit sitting by the corner of the cover. i just couldn't resist smiling like a loon at the picture at times in between reading chapters, there were times i expected it to wriggle its nose at me. and more often than not, i wanted to have a live one on my lap to cuddle whilst i was reading.
i was tickled with the way Adams vividly portrayed the mannerisms of the rabbits especially in the company of their friends--when they touch with each other's noses, when they nuzzle and bump with one another usually for comfort and assurance, when they stop to nibble in a huddle, and even the way they heal another's wounds by licking it's fur. it's an endearing and refreshing look at the way these little critters presumably live their lives. there are no childish conversations with humans, no dressing up as humans, and certainly no aspirations to be human. they just are. and that's what made their adventures exciting and believable, you'd hardly notice that it's a pretty thick book.
this novel explores so many aspects: deep friendship, unswerving selflessness, fierce bravery, and so on; not to mention the underlying currents of the often destructive human intervention in wildlife. i'm gratified to have met Hazel and his wily group. definitely one of the best i've read in a long while, in any genre.
Book Review: Part fantasy, part children's book, all charming...
Summary: 4 Stars
Watership Down by Richard Adams is part fantasy, part children's book and all charming. This has become a true classic that is universally loved. Richard Adams first created Watership Down as an oral story for his two daughters on a long road trip. When he was finally finished, they encourage him to write it down in book-form as it was better than almost any book that he read to them each night.
This story is about a group of rabbits. But unlike many fantasies, these rabbits don't do anything they wouldn't normally do except to talk to each other and other animals. Brother rabbits Hazel and Fiver live happily in Sandleford Warren, until Fiver has a premonition that something terrible is going to happen to their home. They convince a group of rabbits to flee Sandleford and seek a new and safer warren. The rabbits go through many travails and Adams details them all in great detail. Perhaps the most dangerous expedition involves the search for female rabbits to help populate their new warren. The rabbits have their own language, Lapine, and Adams provides a glossary of Lapine terms at the end. This edition also includes a new introduction where the author tells how he came to write this book.
I'm not much of a fantasy reader, but I grew very fond of Hazel, Fiver and their companions.