When God was a Rabbit: The Richard and Judy Bestseller

This book had so much heart. A lovely tale of childhood through to adulthood and the relationship between a brother and sister. I found it difficult to get in to but by the end I couldn't wait to read the ending.

This book captured my imagination from the start, I read it in a couple of days as I couldn't put it down! I could relate to the timeline of real life events, being a similar age as the author. The book highlighted complex friendships and family relationships spanning thirty years.

Most of the book club really enjoyed this light-hearted novel about relationships between family and friends. We all agreed that it wasn't a very deep book, it probably wasn't ever written to be deeply studied, however, it was a good read.

There were a lot of laugh out loud moments in the book, particularly towards the beginning of the book. We all loved the section about the Nativity play, it was hilarious in parts but totally believable. These highly funny moments were then heightened by the addition of very short moments of darkness. These dark moments tended to be very short, and not especially worrisome, they just served to highlight the lighter moments. We thought that everyone has moments of darkness in their lives, but they are quickly forgotten when a humorous moment occurs. The author seems to enjoy juxtaposing two very different elements in this book, for example the dark and light moments, and also the slightly magical and the completely realistic moments. This is done with a very light hand and makes the book the enjoyable narrative that it is.

We all enjoyed reading this novel because it wasn't full of terrifying or thought provoking drama, there are moments that make you wonder, but not too deeply. The more thought provoking aspects weren't really very overt, they were mostly alluded to which made them less dramatic. We did wonder how wise it was to include present day events such as the 9/11 element, but we came to the conclusion that they were treated sensitively even though they weren't actually necessary.

One element we didn't really understand or see the need for was the big gap in the middle of the novel. We felt that there had been gaps in time during the first half of the novel so there was no real need to make such a dramatic first and second half. Maybe there was a reason we didn't notice.

We enjoyed each of the characters, even though they were slightly one dimensional, with quirky being their main characteristic. They were very dysfunctional and hilarious in the main with the odd moment of sadness thrown in to the mix. Although we noticed that the younger characters seemed to be mimicking the older ones with regard to their relationships, the brother sister plus partner one in particular.

Overall we gave this book 7.5 out of 10

The Hunstanworth Village Hall Book Group were lucky enough to receive copies of this to circulate on World Book Night in April 23rd, 2015.
The book begins with a mystical reference to a friend of the main character of Elly who pulls a 50p coin out of her arm (with a date 19 years hence)! The novel follows the lives of Elly and her brother Joe, and other family members and friends and there is plenty of humour, as well as darker themes...murder, child abuse, 9/11.
Our group enjoyed this book and found much to enjoy in it, most of us growing up in a similar era to Elly could relate to many of the periods described in the book. There were several interesting characters who were all very likeable ( the only exception being Mr Golan).
Our only quibble was the 'note' that Elly's brother hid in the biscuit tin that was unearthed many years later - it didn't quite make sense to us and we all wondered if there was some hidden meaning that we were missing.