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Summary: Watership Down, the Best Book of all Time
Review: Watership Down is a very good book about a party of rabbits who run away from their warren to eascape danger. I enjoyed the literature exerpts at the beggining of each chapter. Watership Down has its own "Lapine" vocabulary. It was a bother to look in the Lapine glossary every time I came to a strange word but the story itself is great. Also, one or two of the chapters are long, boring, and don't make sense. The story is fairly long but fun to read and suspensful at some points. This story, however is ideal for classrooms to read. I'd reccomend this book to the sixth grade or seventh grade reader. Even with its small flaws, I loved the book.
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Summary: For children,too!
Review: I was 8 years old when I first read this book, and I was in love with it for good! I read it several times through the years and it has become an old friend. I was surprised to find that it is not on the recommended list of classics for children. I rate this book among my top childhood favourites along with the Narnia books and Tolkien. It's a great adventure story!
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Summary: Stunning, emotional, overwhelming
Review: I avoided reading WD for many years, having made the mistake many people do, that this is a book intended for children. I couldn't be more wrong. From the first pages, I was enthralled and hooked on the story. It is unique, different from anything else you may read. Adams' detailed descriptions of the English countryside, down to the individual names of flowers and plants, added much to the ambiance of the story. But the rabbits of course are the real stars. Fiver, Hazel, Bigwig, Blackberry, and the maniacal General Woundwort, are all clearly drawn and very evocative. I ended up caring deeply for these rabbits and their heroic, epic struggle for their goal, a place they can call home. I will admit that when the Sanderford warren was destroyed, I put the novel down and could not resume reading for a month. It affected me that much. And when Hazel passed on at the end of the book, it was one of the most lyrical, poetic things I have ever read. It never fails to raise a lump in my throat, and I am a man in his late forties! If you haven't already, do yourself a favor and read this book. You will be richly rewarded.
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Summary: 5+++ A JOY TO READ
Review: You can read the other reviews to learn what the story line is...I just wanted to say I love this book every time I read it. It keeps me enthralled, it is adorable, sensitive and just charming. One of the books in my permanent library.
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Summary: Jaques' Redwall can't compare to Adam's realism
Review: Watership Down is a stupendously marvelous book about rabbits. It starts out when a young rabbit named Fiver, a rabbit with the gift of foresight, sees the warren they live in being destroyed, and they must leave there at once, with as many as will follow. He convinces his brother Hazel, simply because Hazel knows the truth of his dreams. They approach the Thearah, the head of the rabbits, but that does not go well. So they leave the warren, and the story is of them traveling, trying to find a home, and at last succeeding. Then they have to get does from another warren, Efrafa, that is run very militarily by a rabbit named General Woundwort. That is a lot more to this novel than that extremely brief summary. You get to meet a grand sea gull named Kehaar. It is one of my most favoured books, and I know of none outside the fantasy market that touches its realm of invention. The best thing about this novel is how thoroughly researched this is. This is not regular anthropomorphic fiction, where talking animals are just caricatures of humans, or they're animals without that true sense of their nature. The rabbits in WATERSHIP DOWN behave like real rabbits. I'd go so far as to call this THE LORD OF THE RINGS of this type of fiction, with talking animals. Adams has taken the real behaviour of rabbits and set them in a wonderful story. The depth of his achievement never fails to amaze me. He totally makes a believable real world of the rabbits, and from the rabbit's perspective. Besides being a great novel, this makes this work stand out even moreso. All the places, including the place Watership Down, are real locations in England. Although Brian Jacques' REDWALL series is often hailed in comparision to this, in terms of actual scope of reality, REDWALL and all its incarnations is inferiour to his. Not that I don't like REDWALL. Brian Jacques has a very real gift of telling a rollicking good yarn, and his series deserves everything it gets. Its just that WATERSHIP DOWN is better in the sense that instead of taking animals and imposing them with personalities, with them losing their nature and taking on a definably human one, Adams did not go to that extreme. He balanced them with ultimately human traits necessary for the story, but still in keeping with their animal nature, with them behaving and acting like real rabbits. This is why I love this particular novel so much. It achieves a balance of animal and human qualities, of which so few stories in this particular genre attempt to achieve. Of course, not all these stories are trying to achieve that balance, or need too, because they are aiming for an entirely different point and are using anthropomorphic fiction as its vehicle, and that's alright. (Case in point: George Orwell's ANIMAL FARM, which is as every bit as good as this, although it is sofor entirely different reasons.) It gives anthropomorphic fiction a new height and goal to shoot too: 1. To take an animal, for purpose of a story, and with human traits and failings let us get to know the character and its surroundings. 2. To take the character created, and to keep it in keeping with its real species. If it's a bear or an otter, have the bear and otter behave like real bears and otters. It makes the fiction so very much richer. The interaction between the rabbits and human society is an excellent treatise in its own right on man's dominance over nature. It gives a very interesting view on how animals interact and deal with us. They are two separate societies, and each must deal with the other. Of course, the humans have the overall hand. That is why, indeed, the rabbits led by Hazel and Fiver must forsake their home warren in the first place. On the Notice Board (name of the first chapter "The Notice Board") there is a notice which reveals the humans will make a shopping mall or something like that in that location. Although this may seem strange, the only other books that I have read that gives a very interesting animal perspective on human society is in quite a different setting, with largely comic overtones. The HANK THE COWDOG books, a children's series greeted with enthusiastic response from both children and adults, gives a perfectly delightful view of human society from an animal's perspective. They are written by John R. Erickson (I'm proud to say I hail from his home state of Oklahoma, though now I am far removed from there). In conclusion, one of the books I love and respect the most. His depth of invention is amazing, his achievement, although in a much different setting, parallels the achievements of Robert Jordan and J. R. R. Tolkien. This is one of those books I wished I had written (as H. G. Wells said of Sinclair Lewis' BABBITT, and, perhaps more importantly, Stephen King said of William Golding's LORD OF THE FLIES, another debut novel). I bought a hardback copy of SHARDIK, a novel of similar magnitude (or so they say.) I haven't read it yet. They say it topples this book, and if that is the case, Mr. Adams is even moreso a truly remarkable writer of novels.
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Summary: Perfect book to introduce people to classic fiction
Review: A look through the many reviews of this book raises an interesting question: Is this book really a classic (a la Dickens, Eliot, Hemingway etc.)? I think my answer would be no. However, I do think it is an excellent introduction to those wonderful authors and I'm happy to see it's being taught in our schools. Watership Down is a very sophisticated form of popular fiction. Don't think so? Well, it provides at least three distinct social structures (the three main warrens), addresses the issues and complexities of leadership (Hazel isn't the obvious leader-type), and comments on differing psychologies (think of the denizens of the warren near the snare) all in the form of a complex allegory. It has other depths as well, but the point I want to make is that these are wrapped up in a compelling adventure story written from the unique perspective of fantasy. Add in the fact that it's gracefully written and you have a book that is appealing to young people but provided plenty of material for conversation and thought. Is it on the level of, say, George Eliot or Joseph Conrad? I don't think so. It provides a heroic and happy ending that while exciting, isn't convincingly realistic. In addition, though the characters are wonderfully drawn, they clearly "wear" white hats or dark ones when the real world tends to be gray. That said, I remember struggling through "Lord Jim" in high school and feeling like I missed alot of what was being said. Reading it 20 years later confirmed that opinion. It isn't that I was stupid in high school--I simply lacked enough life experience to appreciate the subtleties of what Conrad was getting at. I've always felt that teaching the great classics in high school is, at best, a questionable undertaking. Far better to teach a book on the level of "Watership Down" (and there aren't many books in this middle region between popular and classic), so that young readers learn how to read critically, than to have them drown trying to understand a complicated classic. After they learn critical reading skills, then move them on to a true classic. There are those who will say I'm condescending to kids suggesting this, but it's equally legitimate to suggest that it is arrogant to assume that ALL teenagers can understand the subtlety of books which adults write long tomes analyzing. Lest this tome makes "Watership Down" sound like a textbook, let me say that when I first read it 20 years ago, I could not put the book down. The last 150 pages carry the reader along like a tidal wave. I've read it several times since and each time I happily sank into the wonderful world of Hazel, Bigwig and the others. It's a book that both adults and kids can appreciate and it doesn't suffer with age. So maybe it's a classic after all.
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Summary: Just read it. All of it.
Review: My favorite book of all time, I've read it 9 or 10 times since I was about 12. Each character has its own personality and the suspense towards the end is *really* great. It's not just a book about rabbits, I wish people would look past that more. To be able to write a book starring rabbits and to do such a good job and become a best-seller, it must be well-written. I was so in love with it that I bought the movie.
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Summary: Are you looking for a great book to read?This is the one!
Review: The description in this book is so beautiful and rythmic and it creates a picture that is very clear in the readers mind.
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Summary: I hate this book...
Review: I had to read this book in the 6th grade because I was in the "gifted" reading class and I was so sick of it after the very first page! I can't believe the author wasted so much time writing this book! It is VERY boring, just rabbits describing how great the grass is. VERY BORING
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Summary: Best Book I've ever read --- and I dont even like to read!
Review: i will keep this short. I am a 16 year old senior in high school and read this last year. I had to read it for my english class and thought i was going to be bored to death with the story of rabbits. I am the person that dislikes reading and never finishes the whole book. Well to my amazement i was really glad that i read it. Watership down is one of the very few books that i have completly finished. Im not going to tell you the actual plot because i want you to read it and be surprised at how great it is. I guarentee you that you will love it.
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