An allegorical tale of love and the struggle of good against evil. Two dogs escape from a laboratory using animals in their experiments. I know I read it when it first came out and I know I enjoyed it, but I don't really remember much about it, so can't give it more than 3*. ( )

What a disappointment compared to Watership Down! 2 stars is generous. There is an extensive review on my shelf, but this book commits the cardinal sin of being boring . . .and 480 pages of boring is not good! ( )

Adams writes a book about two dogs who escape from an animal experimentation station. They are physically and mentally traumatized by the torture done to them, but they have no idea what is in store for them, trying to live as wild animals in the Scotland Highlands in winter.

This is a lovely tale and it's written with lovely language, and worth every one of its five stars. ( )

What do I begin with reviewing this book? It is more than just a book about two dogs who escape their cages in an animal research facility. It is about humanity, and the bond between domesticated dogs and humanity, and thoughtlessness and politics, and really just everything.

**Trigger Warning - animal experimentation**

The book begins with the larger of the two dogs, a large black Lab mix named Rowf, almost ready to finish his time in the tank. This is an experiment that documents how long he is able to maintain consciousness in a large metal tank full of water, until he finally sinks from exhaustion. When he is revived, he returns to his pen where his neighbor, Snitter, is finding a possible way out. And Snitter has undergone brain surgery to test who knows what. While humans can't see it, he has now a gift of the Sight without fully understanding how or why.

The two dogs make their way through the animal experimentation building till they are able to escape into the Lake District fells and thence away. Snitter, a fox terrier who had been a good man's pet until a horrible traffic accident, can't understand where all the houses and roads and men are. Rowf, who has never known anything but trouble from humans, is a little less confused but equally savvy that they have to learn to hunt. They are helped in this endeavor by a canny tod (fox for us Yanks) who teaches them how to kill sheep and raid a chicken coop. Naturally, these activities don't make them popular with the inhabitants of Coniston and Dunnerdale.

The storyline moves simultaneously between the dogs and tod, the sheep farmers, the men who run the animal research station (acronym A.R.S.E.), newspaperman Digby Driver, and various supporting characters. Richard Adams makes it clear in his preface that all the good people are real (though not necessarily alive at the same time) and all the bad people are made up. As an added bonus, this edition has marvelous drawings and maps of the extraordinary Lake District, and the local dialects are written as they would have been spoken.

Not an easy book to get through (see "Triggers" above), but definitely worth the effort. ( )

Richard Adams's first and most popular book was "Watership Down", essentially an adventure tale all about rabbits, with barely any human intervention, except for the precipitating event and the coda, with "Dr. Adams", perhaps Richard Adams's father.

The purpose of the book is didactic; Richard Adams decided to write a novel about the evils of useless animal experimentation, and he went about it very thoroughly, using the animals' point of view.

It may not have been his purpose, but like many English authors of that time, he shows his growing contempt for the new sort of English person, venal, bureaucratic, silly, trivial and corrupt. There are excursions into the world of national politics, local politics, and journalism, all satirical yet realistic. The good people are selected from person he has met, just like the brave rabbits of "Watership Down" were modeled on soldiers and resistance fighters he had known during WWII. They are actual ex-soldiers, like Peter Scott, or hard-working sheep farmers. The cynicism about all the rest of the characters is obtrusive. Poor Mr. Powell undergoes a conversion experience of sorts, and when we leave him has formed the resolution of becoming a useful person instead of an animal-torturing bureacrat.

The animals are, of course, sympathetic and generally very close to their own deaths throughout the story. Being dogs, i.e., domesticated animals, they have theories about the humans which are not at all like those of the rabbits of "Watership Down", wild animals with very little chosen contact with humans.

The memory of WWII persists. Mr. Powell has nightmares about the Russian front while sick. Mr. Ephraim is lonely and tormented by the loss of so many of his family and by the horrors the survivors experienced.

The very last part allows Adams to put a dialogue, very Socratic, into the mouths of two famous naturalists. The dialogue is suprisingly uninteresting, unfortunately.

A good book, because of the novel subject, expertly told. ( )