An avian Watership Down, One for Sorrow tells of Birddom, a land where birds once lived in harmony with one another, governed by the Council of Owls; they spoke a common language with mammals, and life was balanced. But with the increasing ravages of Man and the increase in road kill, scavenger species magpies have outgrown their environmental niche. Led by the evil and tyrannical Slyekin, bands of magpies have taken on the task of wiping out entire populations of smaller birds. Traska, a vicious and ruthless individual, is leader of a group hell-bent on taking out the last robin in Birddom, our hero, Kirrick.
The tale opens shortly after the murder of Kirrick’s partner Celine, by two of Slyekin’s offsiders, Skulk and Skeet. Heartsore with grief, and no longer driven solely by a need to survive, Kirrick begins to ponder the “malignant intelligence” responsible for the always-predatory magpies’ change in behaviour, and wonder if he can stop it. But “what difference could one small, single bird make?”
My memory for books is quite good – I can usually remember where and when(ish) I bought each one or, of a gift, from whom. But, as I work my way through the less new books on my To Read shelves I sometimes wonder what on earth possessed me to buy X in the first place – clearly something attracted me to it when I first saw it, but looking at it now I cannot for the life of me imagine what that was.
One for Sorrow, on the other hand, had been calling to me for a while. An elegant soft-cover volume, the cover art shows a white bird’s wing against a sky dark with black birds in flight, and the lavish praise of those in the know.
They should have known better. This story is (according to Alan Yentob, BBC Director of Drama and Entertainment) an “epic tale in the tradition of Watership Down and Lord of the Rings” and (says the Times Educational Supplement) it's “a resonant commentary – a savage as well as a sentimental tale” (they also called it an epic).
I was indeed reminded of Watership Down very often while I read One for Sorrow. This was partly because they are both stories told from the perspective of creatures we rarely think about as protagonists, partly because both have animals whose lives are changed due to the actions of Man encroaching on the natural world, partly because the main character/s embark on a life-altering journey.
But mostly I was reminded of Watership Down because Richard Adams created a brilliant, cohesive, rich, textured, internally-coherent world (if you haven’t already, read Watership Down today!). And Woodall? Didn’t.
For all that he tries to add depth with back-story, the characters lack depth and I didn’t give a damn about any of them. I found it particularly irritating that they expressed human emotions and exhibited human behaviour. I can buy avian grief, but not the floods of tears that the heroes (Kirrick and his new partner Portia) frequently create – to the point of saturating their feathery little breasts. At one point one bird affectionately kiss-pecks another on the face. Oh please.
In Watership Down the rabbits fear, then condemn, the warren that mimics human behaviour; they greet each other by scenting, like real rabbits do; and they have names that sentient rabbits might actually use – based on plants, character traits, or birth order (Hazel, Bigwig, Fiver). In One for Sorrow birds say “By the way, my name’s Mickey”; the villains have villenous names and the heroes human or humanish names (Tomar, Isidris, Caitlin).
The dialogue is stilted, unrealistic, and larded with descriptives – on page 45 alone (I opened at random), birds ask venomously, cajole in a conciliatory tone, reply, query, laugh cruelly, and repeat impatiently.
The plot meanders irritatingly, with the odd side trip for no good reason. For example, Kirrick, in his quest for help from across the spectrum of Birddom (other avian lands include - sigh - Wingland), becomes seriously ill for a couple of days and is semi-conscious in a wood. This delay doesn’t have any dramatic impact on the story, nor does his illness affect his personality or capacity for continuing his quest. It’s as though the author needed a few hundred more words and plopped the incident in at random.
Most of all, One for Sorrow is easily the most ‘telling’ book I’ve read in a very long time - I’m not a particularly critical, aware reader, but the lack of showing kept hitting me in the face, and contributed to my lack of engagement with the book.
As discussed, I could certainly see how parallels (though, in my case, unfavourable ones) could be drawn between One for Sorrow and Watership Down. I really didn’t see any similarity with Lord of the Rings, though Lynn suggests that it alludes to the long journey Kirrick makes. Eh. Still, I should be grateful to Clive Woodall, for furnishing two new rules of books buying:
2) Be cautious if a review refers to the book as an epic. Run if that’s the theme of the blurb.
3) Any book that is billed as the latest X (Stephen King/John Grisham/Harry Potter/Jodi Picoult/fill in your interests here) should be approached with suspicion. 3)a. Fear books that allegedly combine wildly disparate (and popular) predecessors. What would a Watership Down/LOTR hybrid look like, anyway? More to the point, what was I thinking? Please send your answers on the back of a plain, business-sized envelope… - Alex
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