Can your brother tell the future?
Hi, I’m Hazel. My brother can tell the future, so we have to leave the old warren because he senses danger. And then we found out that our old warren was destroyed! And we just realized that we have no does, which are female rabbits. So we have to go on a deadly adventure to find them.
If you want to find out if we get some does and make it back alive, you’ll have to read the book. ( )

Going into this book, all I knew was that it was a classic that was about talking bunnies. Now, I've never been a big fan of rabbits, but I decided to give this a try anyway. I mean a five hundred page book about rabbits? I had to see what this was all about.
After the initial charm wore off, I was bored. I found all the rabbits to be interchangeable, and some of their folklore confusing. But, it got better as it went on, especially those final 200 hundred pages. I found some of their chapter-long fables distracting, as well as a sudden switch to the human world. There would be random comments about baseball or something to describe a situation, and it would draw me out of the story. I also didn't like the portrayal of does as just sex-objects, which would make me have less sympathy for the rabbits plight. I have to say, for the most part, I forgot they were bunnies. The writing was easily read, and it wasn't to hard to follow. If I was a tad smarter, I could figure out all the parallels between bunny warrens and human government, but I'm too lazy for that.
Even though it is usually marketed as a young adult book, I think anyone can enjoy it. Overall, it was a enjoyable fantasy and quite epic. ( )

Finishing a truly great book causes such a contradiction in feeling that I don't believe there's anything else quite like it. Sad that it's over, and happy it's complete, and filled with the calm of any genuinely mind-bending experience but in a really fidgety way like you just need to talk to everyone about it but usually can't because I don't know if I've ever finished a book in someone else's company, certainly not somebody who'd read the same book. All you really want to do, anyway, is read more, but aside from some desultory flipping back and reviewing favourite passages, that you can't do. Because these books stay with you like the taste of good chocolate, and the last thing you want to do is wash it out with another book...even if that latter may or may not be equally delicious.

After finishing the first of Watership's 4 parts, I told my mom that it was "you know, pretty good" and by the end I was also powering through, not to reach the end, but to hurry up and find out that Hazel and Fiver and Bigwig are all okay and that they can settle down in their new warren and all live happily ever after. I read the epilogue over three times and then flipped back to two short parts that I liked and read them again, and even now part of me wants to read the whole book over again but I can't because that would be overkill.

I'm not usually a fan of animal protagonists. Adams' rabbits, though anthropomorphized, always remain undeniably lapine. But if anything, this predilection of mine does even more credit to Adam's storytelling. I picked up the book in the Kids 9-12 section of Chapters; I somehow missed that required reading when I was younger, but I think I've made my feelings clear in previous posts about so-called "children's literature." However, the allegorical themes dressed in child-ish content has posed certain problems in the critical treatment of Adams' work.

Clearly, Watership can't be summarized as just a story about rabbits. It's not a full-blown allegory in the way of something like Animal Farm but I have to say, there's only a certain amount of respect I can have for such an obvious blow-by-blow parody. It can only be read on two levels: the surface and the symbolic. With truly great allegorical literature (and this is particularly true with great children's literature) you should be able to go as deep as you like down the proverbial rabbit hole. In any case, each chapter is introduced with a quote from various classical sources from Shakespeare to Xenophon to Jane Austen to Lewis Carroll. Reading the book reminds you of the Homeric epics and Bible stories and fairy tales all at once. Additionally, the novel's subject matter can hardly avoid a great deal of political commentary on freedom, community, government and especially leadership.

But. Even taking all that into consideration, it still is what it is, which is: a story about rabbits. Adams is very clear on that point, and his main source in writing the book was Lockley's The Private Life of the Rabbit. This becomes relevant when taking into account that the main criticism of the novel is regarding its portrayal of gender issues. The main characters in the novel are all bucks, and the does are regarded repeatedly as breeding stock when our heroes realize that their new society will fail if they have no one to mate with. Additionally, the second half of the book concentrates largely on the quest to liberate a group of does from their oppressive, fascist warren. I don't want to delve to deeply into this issue, but I couldn't help but wonder: to what extent do our human gender issues remain relevant when transposed onto rabbits?

Anyway, to finish off, I leave you with one of my favourite passages from Watership Down, which finds Fiver warning Bigwig and Hazel away from another warren, partially akin to Lotus-Eater society:
"You felt it then? And you want to know whether I did? Of course I did. That's the worst part of it. He speaks the truth. So long as he speaks the truth it can't be folly--that's what you're going to say, isn't it? I'm not blaming you, Hazel. I felt myself moving towards him like one cloud drifting into another. But then at the last moment I drifted wide. Who knows why? It wasn't my own will; it was an accident. There was just some little part of me that carried me wide of him. Did I say the roof of that hall was made of bones? No! It's like a great mist of folly that covers the whole sky: and we shall never see to go by Frith's light any more. Oh, what will become of us? A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel." ( )

A good story. Timeless. ( )

Blurb: [Wanneer hun kolonie wordt bedreigd door mensen, gaat een groep dappere konijnen op zoek naar een nieuwe woonplaats. Onderweg moeten ze talloze gevaren trotseren, maar uiteindelijk vinden ze een prachtige vallei waar ze een nieuw bestaan kunnen opbouwen. Daar wacht hun echter de grootste strijd van allemaal… Miljoenen lezers lieten zich reeds meeslepen door de magische fantasiewereld van Waterschapsheuvel, die vaak onthutsend veel op de werkelijkheid lijkt. Uit de pers: 'Een klassieker … Een prachtig boek' – Los Angeles Times. 'Waterschapsheuvel lees je ademloos uit' – Elsevier.]
Samenv.: Verhaal over een groep konijnen die zich onttrekt aan het gezag van het opperkonijn en de kolonie verlaat om nieuwe woonplaats te zoeken.
Samenv.: De figuur waar alles om draait in dit breed opgezette direnverhaal heet Vijfje. Een jong, helderziend konijntje dat intuïtief het naderende gevaar aanvoelt. Niet iedereen is bereid Vijfje te volgen, wanneer hij de kolonie wil verlaten. De kleine groep heeft immers een lange en gevaarlijke tocht voor de boeg. Tenslotte bereikt zij, afgepeigerd en gekwetst, het beloofde land. Waterschapsheuvel. Maar daarmee zijn nog lang niet alle problemen van de baan. Het frappante van dit werk is de intense sfeer, het beeld dat wordt geschetst van een maatschappij met eigen regels, eigen wetten, een eigen taal, met een eigen geschiedenis en een schat aan oude symbolische verhalen. De wereld die R. Adams heeft gecreëerd is een wereld die je vaag meent te kennen omdat de relaties met onze wereld aanwezig zijn. Duidelijke druk. ( )