I have not vanished off the face of the earth, not entirely. I have been writing a NaNoWriMo novel.

I did see ‘The Village’, so I popped into to Film Forensics and made some irresponsible suggestions.

And I wrote a review on Amazon for John Marsden’s ‘The Rabbits’, which doesn’t seem to have passed the censor, so I’ll have a go trying to recreate it here. I saw this book at the public library in Lakemba, where I used to walk sometimes with my kids back in 2001 from my house in Punchbowl.


'The Rabbits' is this not-veiled-at-all allegory where this happy land inhabited by sugar glider things is invaded by rabbits who are obviously Anglo-Celtic Australians and do all kinds of nasty stuff. I considered checking it out and not returning it, because it was evil.

Is there any hope of coexistence with the rabbits held out in the book? Nope.

Are the rabbits shown to have any redeeming features? Nope.

What are rabbits, in Australia? They are vermin, to be exterminated without mercy.

I couldn’t help wondering if a public library would have stocked a cute illustrated kids book about skullcap-wearing rats who come and bulldoze the olive groves of happy little gerbils, shoot them, and blow up their villages. Just possibly, I guess, given the way things are nowadays. How about drug-addled, molotov-cocktail throwing gerbils who terrorise a peaceful town of baguette-carrying rabbits? I don’t think so.

I bet at least one of those guys who have been buying acetone and hydrogen peroxide to blow us up used to came to that library, with his kids. Bad book. Not happy, John.