Customer Reviews

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Stories

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Being both a fiction writer and historian, Emma Donahue has compiled a book of short stories based on events and people she came across in her research. In many cases all she had to work with were one or two sentences, a name, or a rather fantastic story. So she took it upon herself to create the stories and characters that might be behind these brief bits of information.

It's an interesting idea, and the actual writing is flowing and poetic, however, the majority of these stories ultimately disappointed me. Sometimes it's because her stories are a little too obvious, as with the title story. If you are going to write about a woman who is reported to have given birth to rabbits, and you want to give a logical explanation, a scam is about the only explanation you can come up with. THe only room for creativity is in why these folks decided to try it and how they came up with it, both of which I found to lack much depth.

The greatest shortcoming, however, was in the length of the stories. When the main purpose is to develop a character behind a bit of news, it requires far more words. THese stories were more on the order of short shorts. Yet because they were based on actual events, the surprise endings and plot turns required to make a short short work, are not here. Therefore the reader is ultimately left unsatisfied and wondering why the story needed to be written in the first place.

Oddly enough, the only story that appealed to me was the last one, Looking for Petronella. This story was quite a bit longer than the others and had more depth. The plot was also a lot more creative. It was almost as though the author needed to build her momentum to reach this point.

All in all this is not a bad read, but nothing I need to keep on my bookshelf.

Such an amazing short story collection - Emma Donoghue's historic fiction is gorgeously written. As a historian, Donoghue has stumbled upon brilliant sotries of extraordinary women lost over time. These seventeen vivacious tales take us back through the last few centuries in England and Ireland, fleshing out personal accounts discovered through lost letters and archives.

The first story, "The Last Rabbit" is an excellent build up for the entire collection. Donoghue narrates the experiences of Mary Toft, who in the 1700's tricked her Irish town and half of London into believing that she could give birth to rabbits. While medical experts tried to desperately to disprove the hoax, Mary suffers the indignities of being a medical marvel, suffering embarrasing examinations from an assortment of "birth experts" and speculators. Her own comentary practically relates childbirth to a form of prostitution, which makes sense that in the last scene she discovers that she has been taken to a brothel to give birth to her rabbits. Marriage, childbirth and the historical low status of women take up most of the storylines. In "Acts of Union", a syphallis infected soldier is tricked into marrying an apothecary's spinster-niece. Though the soldier certainly sees himself a victim, his bride seems to have settled for worse, but is left knowing that this is her only opportunity to marry.

There is a certain richness to Donoghue's writing, dealing with religious and social misogyny. Her heroines are strangely tough, vulgar and sometimes shrewd, but there is a undeniable dignity to them. Later characters include a cult leader, a wheel-chair bound woman who leads rescue teams for drowning sailors and a pregnant countess convinced that she'll die during childbirth. One added bonus is that each chapter includes the historic contents of the protagonists, lists the articles and letters that the author used in her research. Not only are the stories based on some reality, but they feel very real. You can not doubt that you have learned something.

THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS is an amazing piece of literature. Historical fiction has never been a big interest of mine, but Emma Donoghue has changed that with this one book.

...what the lives of others were like, the others being those figures in history you may have heard or read about, or perhaps just a no-name other, then this is the book for you. Ms. Donoghue finds snippets of information about historical women and crafts a little larger snippet of life for them. The stories are not long, and I feel justifiably so. These are just tastes, just notions of what life might have been like. They are dreams, creations on a whim to explain the life of a woman so very long ago in England.

Ms. Donoghue's writing is wonderful. It has a musical quality, shows its humor and tenderness, greed and hesitation. Her imagination is rich and deep, and her research astounding for such small stories.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book that I would easily recommend.

Just finished THE WOMAN WHO GAVE BIRTH TO RABBITS, by Emma Donoghue - a collection of historical fictional short stories. This book was incredible - language, style, history, wabbits [there was a rabbit mentioned somewhere in each story].

Some stories just slid quietly by - making a small statement. But they were balanced by the ones that hit me between the eyes: Dido, How a Lady Dies, Words for Things, Ballad.

Some particular passages...

From "Ballad" - the tale of the young man who brought the plague to the two women he loved the most - "He wonders what it must be like to have a friend so long that you cannot remember a time before; to be woven together from the root."

From "How a Lady Dies" - I think this was my favorite story in the book. The sad, aching to be that person that cares so much for someone else and has the dignity to not cross the line. Or to be the other person, know that you're cared for so much but you are not able to give back that care - coupled with watching this person wasting away and being able to offer nothing more than a hand to hold and a smile. *sniffle*

"The voice of love is a noose. It keeps you dangling between two worlds."

"The only thing one can do in Bath that one did not do the day before is die."

"The doctors think a young lady of fortune must have everything to live for. ... Miss Pennington thanks them all and pays their fees without a murmur. She is coming to realise how very rich she is. If she was only a pauper, this dying would have been over with a long time ago."

"It occurs to her that she died some weeks ago and never noticed."

"No, Elizabeth has written nothing worth marble. Her verses are thin leaden things. Nothing to leave behind her, then. Only a share in a much-divided heart."

Read this book, ya hear?

This is an eclectic collection of interesting stories from an Irish novelist. One of the stories deals with Mary Toft, a woman who appeared to give birth to rabbits in 18th-century England. I enjoyed the wide range of topics in the book at the fringes of history, including Caroline Crachami, 20 inches tall at the age of three.

Readers interested in historical oddities will enjoy the very similarly titled book The Girl Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Cliff Pickover. Pickover's book both shocks and delights.

Emma Donoghue vivifies various historical tidbits in this sumptuous feast of stories. From the first story about a woman who convinces England at large that she has given birth to rabbits in an attempt to make a living, to the last story "Looking for Petronilla", which stars a witch remembering the servant woman that she regrets abandoning, these tales capture the reader and make us want to beg for more. And by the final page, you will. Donoghue's style here nearly compares to that of Jeanette Winterson, but it's more grounded in reality, featuring odd events in human history without the aspects of magical realism that Winterson uses so effectively. Also included are the references that inspired Donoghue to create each tale, thereby giving the readers the nuggets which began this collection. Maybe if we all beg together...

A few of the stories were really enjoyable, but overall, it just wasn't that interesting. I had a hard time getting into the stories or following the flow. Not a keeper.

I enjoyed this book much more than I'd expected to. I often struggle with short story collections because there's no continuous plot thread that makes me want to keep reading, but these stories had a different kind of twist that was almost as good: each one is inspired by an obscure historical fact, and at the end of each story there's a note explaining the historical basis. I found this absolutely fascinating, and I appreciated the stories much more when I could see how Donoghue had crafted them from the tiniest scraps of historical information. I just wish the notes had been longer