I’ve been bumping into this book for years and have been
thinking I should read it. The cover and the title interested me and looked
like exactly the kind of thing I like in a teenage book. When I bumped into it
again in the library, I figured I might as well get it out this time.
And in it I found a story I thoroughly enjoyed. So much so
that I started reading it at about 2.30pm on Sunday and finished it about
11.30pm that night. Definitely one good way of getting to eighty books in a
year and it was partially because I had a surprisingly free Sunday, but it was
also the kind of book I could hardly put down. The story was intriguing: what
exactly happened at the fairground the night Pete and his old friends go there?
I liked the way coincidences sometimes turned out to be coincidences and
sometimes something more – usually completely the other way round to how I
expected. The character of Raymond was very well drawn in my opinion and the
unreliable nature of Pete’s account made for interesting reading.
There was a convenience about the plot which in retrospect
was a little daft – the actual solution to the mystery was a little trite, and
the untied up ends were a little frustrating. However, they added some veracity
to the tale, as loose ends are never all tied up in real life; in this respect I
noted a similarity to Kate Atkinson’s Brodie Jackson books which I didn’t fully
enjoy when I read them. However, none of this bothered me as I read the book
and I’m probably being picky here.
The one thing I probably would alter about the book even as
I was reading it was something that drew me towards the novel in the first
place: the title. Perhaps part of my interest in the title was that When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman is
one of my favourite novels of recent years – and I’ve always liked rabbits.
There was a similar connection between the rabbit and people in this novel, but
the impact of Black Rabbit upon the plot was a little thin, and the whole notion
of it being ‘Black Rabbit Summer’ was a little negated by the fact that the
events of the novel took about four days to happen.
Still, I’m, as I said, largely being picky, because I really
enjoyed this for what it was at the time. My next read is slightly similar in
nature and I’ll compare the two when I get to finishing it.
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