When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

Previously published in the Herald magazine. 

The very title of Sarah Winman’s When God was a Rabbit tells you a great deal about the book. It’s a title that has clearly required some thought: it’s odd enough to garner attention, different enough to suggest it is pushing boundaries, quirky enough to be appealing and possibly even cute. This is probably a fair description of what the book is as well.

Is the book charming? Sometimes. Is it readable? Yes, very. Is backed by a smooth publicity machine? Absolutely. Does it need one? Yes, because without a large marketing campaign it would probably be lost in the deluge of debuts this year. The book is being pitched as a sweet-sad box of memories and secrets from the childhoods of Joe and Elly, a pair of siblings who belong in a loving, extremely accepting but slightly dysfunctional family and was sent to some critics and reviewers in a tin, with other memorabilia mentioned in the book and a postcard from Cornwall tied up with string.Cornwallis where the family moves to, setting up a Bed & Breakfast after the parents strike it lucky in a random lottery win. This move should ideally lead to all sorts of funny encounters with guests etc, but the whole situation remains strangely lopsided and sad, with a quiet desperation sinking deep within. There are many relationships being played out here: the parents with each other, the lesbian aunt in love with the mother, the siblings themselves and then their relationships with their friends. There is love, yes, but there is also a great deal of pervasive sadness and loss.

The tone of the book works well for the first half, when Elly is an awkward pre-teen with an awkward teenage brother, an awkwardly interesting film actor aunt and an awkward, sloppy best friend. But in the second half, it’s all just plain awkward. Winman’s writing is very self-possessed throughout the book, but that doesn’t make it great – many times it makes it simply a little too self-aware. It almost seemed too studied at times; so smooth that there is almost no traction, no rough surface to catch at a readers attention and force a reaction.

Admittedly, When God was a Rabbit is difficult to judge initially, mainly because there is a lot going on and much of it seems to be complicated and potentially sticky. There is some token magic realism in the form of a talking rabbit (the titular ‘God’) and a portent of death past its due date as well as pedophilia, cancer, domestic abuse, a rags to riches factor, murder, kidnapping and bodily mutilation and finally even 9/11. It is possible there is one story stronger than the others, but it is not strong enough to shine through Winman’s busy mosaic of subplots.

One subplot that could possibly have haunted readers if tackled better, is that of the narrator’s abuse as a child by a neighbour. It is entirely a strange situation, one that could create a great deal of dramatic tension. Mr. Golan is an older man with whom Elly seems to spend entirely too much time alone. He tells a very young Elly horrific details of life in a concentration camp but later it is found that he was never in one. His guilt of not suffering more during the Holocaust causes him to tattoo numbers on his arm, ‘harsh and dark as if they had been written yesterday’ (which they had) and he is found later to have been abusing Elly. The various complications that arise from this scenario – the old man’s hidden instability, his strange, complicated feelings towards the Holocaust, his worrying closeness with a young girl- none of these are explored further. Eventuall, it is Elly’s brother who bears the burden of the knowledge of the abuse and the situation simply done away with. ‘He was my friend,’ Elly tells Joe about Mr. Golan, who responds, ‘I’ll get you a proper friend’ and he brings her a Belgian hare they grandly choose to call god.

When God was a Rabbit will hold many familiar memories for those who grew up inEngland at that point in time. But what about the rest of the world? It is not easy for a global audience to connect with a pair of young siblings in the late 60s inEngland, even with so many other factors thrown in. Winman’s formula for the book is correct; she appears to do everything right and yet the book may leave many readers cold. A discerning reader will know objectively that Winman has done it all right, and yet may well feel nothing for it, besides a very slight annoyance at having hoped or excepted more.

It is, however, very easy to imagine the book as a medium budget sweetly sad British film, with some young English ingénue cast as Elly, a gracefully ageing actress who has just started accepting older parts as Nancy the lesbian film star aunt , a vulnerable looking androgynous male actor touted to have great potential as Joe and some has-been TV actors as the parents. This makes even more sense when you read that the writer has been an actor for many years herself.

The guardian’s critic calls When God was a Rabbit a kind of British John Irving and of course he’s thinking of Hotel New Hampshire – but Irving’s book was rich with chaotic idiosyncrasies and hilarities that Winman’s book simply cannot rise to. In fact, it is an unfair comparison. In an attempt to create lasting nostalgia, Winman writes, ‘And I wrote about what I’d lost that morning. The witness of my soul, my shadow in childhood, when dreams were small and attainable for all. When sweets were a penny and god was a rabbit.’ While When God was a Rabbit is also about childhood secrets and their consequences, it is not nearly as rich and as haunting asIrving’s early works. Instead it is simply too sweet, too romantic and too afraid of plunging deeper into the true prickliness of adolescence to achieve any real weight.