This book review was supposed to have a clever title, but the writer is lame.

By Preetika K.

Richard Adams originally wrote Watership Down to scare his daughters at bedtime by  telling them tales of rabbits being snared. Adams successfully disguises an adult tale of struggle, trickery, loss, terror, and destruction into a book about rabbits. 

The story is a tale of rabbits looking for a new home, a quest for survival. Fiver, one of the younger rabbits has a sense of what good and bad things are coming in the future. One day, Fiver senses danger coming to the rabbits' home. Fiver's warning is overlooked by the chief rabbit, but his brother Hazel decides the rabbits must leave immediately. Hazel leads a small group of brave rabbits on an adventure to find a new place to live. With this they begin their frightening journey filled with many dangers and hurdles they must overcome. 

Adam's adept storytelling skills made reading this book a whole lot of fun. The way he magically cloaks a tale of hardship and human struggle into a "simple" story of rabbits in search of a new home, was interesting to read. The storyline was slow paced which was not always engaging. However, the symbolism and meaning of characters, and incidents in this story are what make reading this book exciting. Against the ongoing struggles that take place in the story, Adams presents moments of laughter, and brings in the theme of friendship.

I have not read any of Adam's writing aside from Watership Down, but would enjoy checking out his other writings. If you are looking for a novel to busy yourself with on a rainy day, this is definitely worth looking into. 

Watership Down, by Richard Adams, Macmillan, 1972, 429 pages