Fiction Addiction: When God Was A Rabbit review

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I think I picked a fizzer. It sparked, it came close to igniting, but When God Was A Rabbit ultimately fizzed.

It wasn't all bad. If this was the kind of review where we handed out stars, this debut novel by English author Sarah Winman might get a lazy halfway mark - a 2.5 out of five.

Its strength was in the vivid portrayal of Elly's childhood, which burst with wit and poignance, the warm and quirky writing style, and the intimate portrait of her relationship with her brother Joe.

But there was just too much else going on. By the time Elly reached adulthood there were so many minor characters fighting for attention that even Elly's mother - a central figure - didn't get a chance to pop out into 3D.

The premise of the book, as stated on the back cover, is: "This is a book about a brother and a sister." To which I would add: "and their mother, their father, the sister's friend, the sister's friend's mother, the brother's lover, their neighbour, their aunt, their boarder, their boarder's friend, their parent's driver..."

Several of these characters seemed superfluous (Ginger, Alan, Charlie). They added new strands to the story when Winman should have been focusing on weaving together and tying up the strands she already had. I would have liked to have read more of Elly and Joe's relationship as it grew from childhood to adulthood.

And then there were the dozens of personal and global disasters and tragedies, which include no less than September 11, John Lennon's assassination and Princess Diana's death.

The author has simply tried to do too much - too many characters, too many bombshells, too much plot over too long a period in too short a book.

Even the language tries to do too much. Winman's cracking choice of words in the early part of the novel seduced me ("the dull tint of disinterest that made even rainbows appear grey") but I grew impatient with her style as the book progressed. Some pages read like a list of metaphors, some descriptions tried too hard:

"Many times I had sat with my mother watching the sky change from its French navy to a haloed hue, when the sun encroached upon the horizon, pushing upwards the blanketed dark to make room for its light that appeared golden and orbed and unnatural..."

The effect of all this complexity - of plot, of language, of population - was that by the end of the book I no longer cared about Elly or her brother.

I wanted to fall for this book's charms. But the sparks just didn't fly for us. Have I been too harsh?

I'm gratefully closing the book on May. Tomorrow is a new month, which means a new book. I've decided on The Conductor, by New Zealand author Sarah Quigley, one of the novels we previewed last week in our May Fiction Fix. I'll introduce it properly next week.

Christine will introduce her choice, The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb, on Friday.