An egocentric sexist moron in charge of a rich and powerful nation, England crumbling into servitude and poverty… what a strange parallel world is depicted in Michael Paraskos’s new novel Rabbitman!
Of course, it’s not true. None of it. It’s all just the bizarre games acted out by a group of toys belonging to a little girl called Angela.
President Rabbitman, like his right-wing UK accomplices Balloonhead and Mr Floppy, are nothing but figments of somebody’s imagination. Or of two people’s imaginations, if you count fictional Angela as a person, in a subsidiary sort of way.
And it’s nothing like real life! Does anyone really think that if it was revealed to them that their leaders had all literally sold their souls to the devil to gain power, the public would simply shrug their collective shoulders and say “so what”?
If this is all sounding a bit anarchic, then maybe that’s because the author is the same fellow who wrote the novel In Search of Sixpence, reviewed on this very blog under the heading “Anarchism, art, time and reality…” and the non-fictional Herbert Read: Art and Idealism, an account of one of England’s most important anarchist thinkers.
Rabbitman is a pleasurable read, with a lightness of touch to the surreal satire which even includes a few Dad’s Army gags, for those of certain generation.
But there is deadly serious anarchic message lurking in there as well. And even a positive ending to help the breeze of eternal hope set our inner black flags aflutter.
By the way, despite the central role played by Angela, this book is not suitable for children, even anarchist ones. Or for admirers of real-life rabid Rabbitmen on either side of the Atlantic.
Michael Paraskos, Rabbitman, (Mitcham: Orage Press, 2017).
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