Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams

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Watership Down has been one of my favourite books since I first read it as a ten-year-old and when I re-read it in 2010 I was pleased to find I still loved it as much as I ever did (it’s a book that can be equally appreciated by both adults and children, I think). Despite that, the thought of reading the sequel, Tales from Watership Down, has never really appealed to me – it’s a collection of short stories rather than a novel like the first book and I’ve heard a lot of people say they were disappointed by it. Anyway, I decided to give it a try this Easter (I’ve always associated Watership Down with this time of year as the film often used to be shown on Easter Sunday until parents complained that it was too violent and not the nice cartoon about cute bunnies they’d assumed it was!).

The book is divided into three sections, beginning with a selection of stories featuring El-ahrairah, also known as ‘the Prince with a Thousand Enemies’, the legendary folk hero of the rabbit world. If you’ve read Watership Down, you’ll remember that the rabbits often entertain or comfort themselves by telling stories about El-ahrairah (whom Richard Adams himself described as a rabbit version of Robin Hood). These stories were always my least favourite parts of the novel as I felt they were just a distraction from the main narrative, so I wasn’t exactly thrilled about there being so many of them here. However, I really enjoyed the first one, The Sense of Smell, in which El-ahrairah goes on a journey to several faraway lands in search of someone who can give him the ability to smell, a sense which rabbits don’t yet have, making them vulnerable to predators. He is told that the sinister Ilips, who live in a cave in a land of perpetual darkness, will be able to give him this sense for himself and his rabbits, but things don’t go to plan and El-ahrairah is forced to travel on to the Land of Yesterday, a fascinating fictional world!

At the end of this section there are two stories which don’t involve El-ahrairah. One, Speedwell’s Story, is an intentionally silly story which Adams says in the introduction is ‘representative of the kind of nonsense tales which rabbits enjoy’. As I’m not a rabbit, I didn’t enjoy that one, but I did like The Rabbit’s Ghost Story, which is told by a rabbit called Coltsfoot. As he tells of his encounter with a ghostly rabbit, it’s very atmospheric and while Adams’ writing is often quite dark, this particular story comes close to the horror genre.

The second section of the book consists of four more El-ahrairah stories, but this time they are connected and describe what happened when El-ahrairah and his friend Rabscuttle return from visiting the Black Rabbit of Inlé (this journey was referred to in the original novel). I was intrigued by the first one, The Story of the Comical Field, in which the two rabbits are tricked into entering a man-made maze where they encounter an unspecified ‘evil’, but I found the other stories less interesting.

Finally, we come to the third section and the one I think most of us will have been waiting for: a continuation of the events of Watership Down, describing some of the things that happen to Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig and the others after they establish their new warren on the Down. They don’t have such dramatic adventures as in the first book, but do have to deal with various newcomers who disturb the stability of the warren, including Stonecrop, an escaped hutch rabbit who smells of man, and Flyairth, a doe who is convinced they are all going to die of the White Blindness (myxomatosis). Maybe in response to criticism of the first book being sexist, Adams gives a lot of attention to Hyzenthlay, Vilthuril and the other doe characters and explores the idea of warrens being run by female Chief Rabbits. I enjoyed this final part of the book, but was left feeling a bit sad because it gave us a glimpse of what a true sequel could have looked like.

So, do I think this book is worth reading? I wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to Richard Adams, but if you enjoyed Watership Down and want to spend more time in that world, then you’ll probably like the third part of the book at least – but don’t set your expectations too high and be prepared for lots of El-ahrairah.

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Correspondent to The Queen’s Rival

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It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, an epistolary novel which has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. I haven’t read it, but here’s what it’s about:

Every morning, Sybil Van Antwerp sits down to write letters – to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to attend a class she desperately wants to take, to her favourite authors to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Because at seventy-three, Sybil has used her correspondence – witty and wise – to make sense of the world. But beyond the page, she has spent the last thirty years keeping the people who love her at arms’ length… Until letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life.

Now, Sybil must send the letter she has been writing for all these years – and find forgiveness within herself in order to move on.

Mollie Panter-Downes was the London correspondent for The New Yorker magazine for almost 50 years, beginning in 1939. I’ve read and enjoyed her collection of short stories, Good Evening Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes (1). The twenty-one stories in the book originally appeared in The New Yorker and focus on the lives of British people during the war.

A book which shares a word in the title is An Evening with Claire by Gaito Gazdanov (2). Our narrator, Kolya, spends an evening in Paris with Claire, the woman he loves, while her husband is away. Later, when Claire is asleep, he reflects on his life and the events that led to their first meeting. Gazdanov was a Russian émigré living in Paris and the novel feels very autobiographical. I read it in an English translation by Bryan Karetnyk.

The name Claire leads me to Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These (3). This beautifully written novella is set in a small Irish community and touches on the scandal of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries – institutions for unmarried mothers and other ‘fallen women’ which became the focus of allegations of abuse and neglect. The story takes place in the winter of 1985, which was a particularly cold one.

Another novel set during a very cold winter is The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (4). The book follows the stories of two married couples whose relationships become strained as they try to adjust to life in rural England during the winter of 1962-63, one of the coldest on record in the UK.

We’ve just entered spring here and are looking forward to summer, so I don’t really want to spend any more time thinking about winter. Let’s move on to a book with a summery title instead: The Summer Queen by Elizabeth Chadwick (5). This is the first in a trilogy of novels about Eleanor of Aquitaine, who was queen of France as the wife of King Louis VII, and then queen of England as the wife of King Henry II.

Another historical novel with the word ‘Queen’ in the title is The Queen’s Rival by Anne O’Brien (6). It tells the story of Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, who was the mother of two English kings – Edward IV and Richard III – and played an important role during the Wars of the Roses. Written in the form of letters and diary entries, it’s an epistolary novel, so brings the chain full circle!

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And that’s my chain for April. My links have included: correspondents, the word ‘evening’, the name Claire, cold winters, seasons of the year and queens.

In May we’ll be starting with Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy.

The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

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Translated by Ho-Ling Wong

This is the third of Japanese author Yukito Ayatsuji’s books I’ve read – I loved The Labyrinth House Murders but found The Decagon House Murders disappointing, so I was curious to see what I would think of this one. All three books are part of Ayatsuji’s Bizarre House series and all of them feature the detective Shimada Kiyoshi and an unusual, sinister house designed by the architect Nakamura Seiji. The Mill House Murders was originally published in Japanese in 1988 and is available from Pushkin Press in an English translation.

This book is set entirely within the walls of the Mill House which, like the Decagon House and Labyrinth House, is one of Nakamura’s creations. It’s home to Fujinuma Kiichi, who sustained terrible injuries in a car accident several years earlier and is now confined to a wheelchair, with a mask and gloves covering the damage to his face and hands. Kiichi is the son of the late artist Fujinuma Issei, and although he normally lives a reclusive life with his wife, Yurie, and their servants, once a year he invites a group of acquaintances to the house to look at his father’s paintings.

In September 1985, the group are making their annual visit when several shocking events occur, all in the space of one night: a woman falls to her death from the tower, one of Issei’s paintings vanishes, one of the guests disappears without explanation and a gruesome discovery is made in the furnace room. A solution is suggested by the police, but it’s not very satisfactory and lots of questions remain unanswered. A year later, in September 1986, the same people have gathered at the Mill House again and this time they are joined by Shimada Kiyoshi, a friend of the man who disappeared (and was largely blamed for everything that happened). Shimada believes he can find out the truth about the events of 1985, but he’ll have to hurry before history begins to repeat itself.

The Mill House Murders is another Ayatsuji novel that I thoroughly enjoyed, so it does seem that it’s only The Decagon House that, for whatever reason, didn’t work for me and I’m glad I decided to give him another chance! Although I often find that Japanese mysteries focus very heavily on complex puzzle solving, often involving alibis, timetables and maps, with characters, relationships and motives pushed into the background, this particular book is more balanced. It does have some floor plans, but I was pleased to find that I could follow the plot quite easily without having to study them too carefully, and the characterisation is stronger than in the Decagon and Labyrinth books.

The timeline switches backwards and forwards throughout the book, with one chapter describing the events of 1985 and the next set in the present day of 1986. This could have become confusing, but as long as I paid attention to the chapter headings, I had no problem keeping them straight in my mind. The mystery itself is a clever one; I partly managed to solve it (mainly because some of Seishi Yokomizo’s novels have similar tropes), but I didn’t get it completely right and was content to let Shimada Kiyoshi, the series detective, explain the full solution for me.

The translator, Ho-Ling Wong, also translated the other books I’ve read in this series and does a great job of making everything very clear and readable. I see there’s a fourth book in the series already in print – The Clock House Murders – and another, The Black Cat House Murders, on its way. I’ll look forward to reading both!

My Commonplace Book: March 2026

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A selection of quotes and pictures to represent March’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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“One of the difficulties of mankind is that they have the vice of inventiveness. It would be an easier world for dragons if this were not so, or if it could be kept within bounds, used for the better working of gold, setting of jewels, or such trading activities as bringing treasure from far countries within reach of dragons.”

Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison (1952)

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For a moment, standing beneath the wide skies and the vista of fields and ancient hedgerows exactly the same as they had been centuries before, she had no longer been in the present day, instead caught up in the turmoil her ancestors had lived through. Love longed for, and love lost. With her feet placed firmly in both times, Paige was able to feel the heartache and anger in both.

The Alchemist’s Secret by Clare Marchant (2026)

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“Strawberry Thief”, 1883, William Morris

‘Everyone is an artist deep down inside; people are creative by their very nature. That’s something Lionel hates to admit because he likes to think he’s special, but I think if we can open up art to everyone that can only be a good thing.’

The Strawberry House by Rachel Burton (2026)

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You had so many ways of deciding which way to live your life. It made his head spin to think of them. It hurt his heart to think that he had decided on the wrong way.

A thing seemed important until there was something more important.

West by Carys Davies (2018)

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‘To be able to love is a luxury,’ he said. ‘That’s why it is always balanced exactly with loss. It is another of life’s great justices.’

The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski (2026)

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‘You know as well as I do that the world is in a mess and floundering deeper every day. We have only a precarious hold on the forces we do liberate – and problems that we ought to be trying to solve, we neglect.’

Trouble with Lichen by John Wyndham (1960)

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Etching of Cromarty by James Fittler, 1804

‘I think Miss Juniper would acknowledge we do these young women a better service by forewarning them of what awaits them in the world they will soon set out in than by leaving them ignorant of it and allowing them to be guided only by novels. There is a class of people amongst whom they will move that do not always face the justice they should, and it is important they understand that.’

The Cromarty Library Circle by Shona MacLean (2026)

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Yes, she thought, going to war had solved so much, it had left things in abeyance, it had meant that all discussion had been postponed, it had made compromise impossible, but in solving what it did, it had solved too much. It had solved everything so there was nothing left.

The News from Dublin by Colm Tóibín (2026)

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‘There is no one right way to do things,’ she said seriously. ‘Life looks different for everybody and just because something you want hasn’t happened yet, doesn’t mean it won’t. There are a thousand different stories waiting in your life, Thea, and you still have time to tell whichever one you want. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’

A Remedy for Fate by MA Kuzniar (2026)

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My favourite books read in March:

The Strawberry House and West

Authors read for the first time in March:

Rachel Burton, Naomi Mitchison, Clare Marchant, Angela Tomaski

Places visited in my March reading:

England, France, US, Ireland, Spain, Argentina, Czech Republic, Scotland

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Reading notes: In March I managed to take part in both Reading Ireland and Reading Wales, with books by Colm Tóibín and Carys Davies respectively. I also completed my Classics Club Spin book, Trouble with Lichen, ahead of the deadline. More importantly, I enjoyed most of the books I read in March, although the Angela Tomaski took me a while to get into, and I had mixed feelings about the Shona MacLean as well.

In April I’m looking forward to 1961 Club which will be hosted by Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon of Stuck in a Book. I also have some NetGalley books to catch up with, so it will be another busy month.

How was March for you? Do you have any plans for your April reading?

The Infamous Gilberts by Angela Tomaski

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Welcome to Thornwalk, home of the last Wynford Gilberts – Lydia, Hugo, Annabel, Jeremy and Rosalind. The downfall of this great family was once the subject of much tawdry gossip and many a sensational headline, and perhaps you hold in your heart some remnant, some echo of this. If so, I ask you to let it go, and here, with me, meet them all anew.

The Infamous Gilberts is an English country house novel with a difference. It begins in 2002 with the news that Thornwalk House, a crumbling mansion in Somerset, is being sold to a hotel chain. Before the hotel people arrive and all traces of the family who once lived there are removed forever, an old family friend, Maximus, takes the reader by the hand and leads us through the house, room by room, looking for clues and secrets left behind that reveal who the Gilberts really were. Each chapter is headed by a different item – The Burn on the Library Rug, Dancing Slippers, A Tuft of Wool, etc – and Maximus goes on to tell us the significance of that item and the story behind it.

I found this book very difficult to get into because the writing style felt so forced and artificial. The narrator speaks directly to the reader, as in the quote I provided above, referring to us as ‘you’ and telling us to climb the staircase, open the door, switch on the light and so on. This made it hard to become immersed in the story and form any kind of connection with the characters. I came close to abandoning the book but instead put it aside for a few days and tried again later. This time I persevered and eventually the narrative style became less annoying and intrusive. As the five Gilbert children, whom I found indistinguishable when they were younger, grew into adults, they also developed as characters and I started to find the story much more compelling.

Beginning in the 1920s and ending in the early 21st century, the book follows the lives of the Gilbert siblings who, in the absence of their father, are raised at Thornwalk by a mother who is struggling to cope and largely leaves them to their own devices. As a result, all five become adults who are damaged or troubled in some way. Hugo, the eldest son, goes away to fight in the Second World War and returns deeply affected by his experiences. Depressed, paranoid and increasingly unstable, he starts to take his frustration out on the people around him. His younger brother Jeremy, on the other hand, is rejected by the army on health grounds and is left with a feeling of inadequacy that leads to him leaving home and spending the rest of his adult life moving from country to country, never really settling down.

As for the three sisters, the youngest, Rosalind, becomes an actress and her shocking actions make her the most infamous of all the Gilberts. Then there’s Lydia, who causes another family scandal by falling in love with her tutor as a teenager and after being forced to end the relationship never seems happy or content ever again. Finally, Annabel suffers from an unspecified mental illness and is considered ‘mad’, but in many ways she is the most shrewd and sensible member of the family. Annabel is also the only one I actually liked; apart from Jeremy, whom we barely see, I found the others so unpleasant it was very difficult to have any sympathy for them.

As you can probably tell, this is a very dark book with some disturbing storylines. I’m not sure why the blurb describes it as hilarious, because I didn’t think it was very funny at all, but maybe that’s just me. I didn’t really understand the role of Maximus in the story either; he tells us that he’s a close friend of the family, particularly Hugo, but almost never interacts with them or features in any of the accounts he gives us of their lives. It seemed that he was there purely because the unusual style and structure of the book required someone to be the narrator rather than because he had any other significance.

I think some readers will enjoy this book and some will struggle with it – although somehow I did both! If anyone else has read it, I would love to hear what you thought.

Thanks to Penguin UK/Fig Tree for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The News from Dublin by Colm Tóibín – #ReadingIrelandMonth26

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This month, Cathy of 746 Books is hosting Reading Ireland Month, celebrating the work of Irish authors. I wasn’t sure if I would have time to contribute anything but have managed to fit in a review of Colm Tóibín’s latest book with a few days of March still to go! The News from Dublin, published this week, is a collection of nine short stories loosely linked by a theme of characters either living far from home or building a new life, putting a distance between their current and past selves.

The collection covers a range of topics and settings. The stories were all interesting, but I inevitably found some much stronger than others. The opening story, The Journey to Galway, was particularly moving. A woman receives a telegram informing her of her son’s death in the First World War, so she takes a train to Galway to break the news to her daughter-in-law. Tóibín perfectly captures the range of emotions she goes through during the journey: grief, loss, a sense of denial, and the trauma of being the one who has to deliver bad news.

Another of my favourites was Five Bridges, set in the present day and tackling a subject that is very relevant at the moment. It follows an Irish plumber, Paul, who is an immigrant living in America and, despite having been there for thirty years, he believes he will be a target of ICE because he came on a tourist visa and has no other documents. Before he leaves the country, probably forever, he reconnects with his young daughter, Geraldine, who lives with his ex-partner and her new husband. As Paul bonds with Geraldine at last, he is full of regret, both for the years she’s been missing from his life and for the future he faces without her. I also liked A Sum of Money, which is about a teenage boy whose parents have made sacrifices to be able to send him to an expensive boarding school. Conscious of not having as much money to spend as his friends, he begins to steal from the other boys – but what will happen when he’s found out? I enjoyed this one as it felt a bit different from the rest of the stories, which made it stand out.

I only really have two criticisms of this book. One is that most of the stories are very open-ended, leaving things unresolved and not providing any answers. As a sort of snapshot of life, giving a glimpse into a character’s world, they’re very effective, but I personally tend to prefer short stories with a more satisfactory ending or a clever twist. The other is that the final story, The Catalan Girls, is novella-length and takes up most of the second half of the book. Although I did enjoy that one, which follows the story of three sisters who move to Argentina from Catalonia as children, I thought it made the whole book feel unbalanced.

The stories in this collection were written at various times and first appeared in other publications rather than being written specifically for this book, but they fit together well (apart from the final one being so much longer). They all have a quiet, reflective tone and I found them very poignant. This was a perfect choice for Reading Ireland Month.

Thanks to Picador for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on my Spring TBR

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Books on my Spring TBR”.

There are more than 10 books I would like to read this spring, but here are some that are definitely on my list.

1. A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer – I’ve just started reading this one in preparation for 1961 Club in April. There are at least two other 1961 books I would like to read as well, but not sure how many I’ll have time for.

2. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch – I was intending to read this in March for Cathy’s Reading Ireland Month and Iris Murdoch readalong, but got distracted by other books. It will be an April read instead, I think.

3. Poirot Investigates by Agatha Christie – I’m planning to read this in May for the Read Christie challenge as the theme that month is Christie’s short story collections.

4. Love Lane by Patrick Gale – A sequel to Gale’s A Place Called Winter, which I read a few years ago and enjoyed.

5. This Dark Night by Deborah Lutz – I’m trying to read more non-fiction this year, so I’m looking forward to this new biography of Emily Brontë.

6. Troubled Waters by Ichiyo Higuchi – Most of the Japanese fiction I read tends to be crime, so I’m curious about this short story collection, which will be something slightly different for me.

7. A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz – I’ve enjoyed all of the other books in Horowitz’s Daniel Hawthorne series, so I’m expecting to enjoy this one as well.

8. Benbecula by Graeme Burnet Macrae – I’ve been meaning to read this since it was published last year and was reminded about it when it was recently longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

9. The Artist by Lucy Steeds – This is also on the Walter Scott Prize longlist and has excellent reviews, so I’m looking forward to reading it.

10. Strange Buildings by Uketsu – I thought Uketsu’s previous two books, Strange Pictures and Strange Houses, were fascinating, so I can’t wait to read this one.

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Have you read any of these or would you like to? What are you hoping to read this spring?