Scan barcode
A review by mafiabadgers
The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame
adventurous
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
First read 11/2024
Technically my first reading, as my childhood text was (as I can now see) very brutally abridged, although it did have the definitve E.H. Shepard illustrations. Now in its full glory, I can see that there is a real delight in language that is not without a sense of fun ("he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped"), but the book is a strange beast too; unmoored from the illustrations, the size of the animals and their features are never consistent, and it seems to think nothing of breaking off from Toad's adventure hijinks for a chapter so that the Water Rat can be hypnotised into a great and terrible yearning for the open sea. This book simply does not get enough credit for being weird.
The book does get ample credit for having influenced Watership Down and The Animals of Farthing Wood, and through them Varjak Paw and Warrior Cats and indeed much of the talking animals subgenre. I hadn't realised growing up, but Redwall really is The Wind in the Willows duplicated twenty-odd times. Brian Jacques truly is to Kenneth Grahame what Georgette Heyer is to Jane Austen. The following exchange could appear almost verbatim in any Redwall book:
Technically my first reading, as my childhood text was (as I can now see) very brutally abridged, although it did have the definitve E.H. Shepard illustrations. Now in its full glory, I can see that there is a real delight in language that is not without a sense of fun ("he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged, and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped"), but the book is a strange beast too; unmoored from the illustrations, the size of the animals and their features are never consistent, and it seems to think nothing of breaking off from Toad's adventure hijinks for a chapter so that the Water Rat can be hypnotised into a great and terrible yearning for the open sea. This book simply does not get enough credit for being weird.
The book does get ample credit for having influenced Watership Down and The Animals of Farthing Wood, and through them Varjak Paw and Warrior Cats and indeed much of the talking animals subgenre. I hadn't realised growing up, but Redwall really is The Wind in the Willows duplicated twenty-odd times. Brian Jacques truly is to Kenneth Grahame what Georgette Heyer is to Jane Austen. The following exchange could appear almost verbatim in any Redwall book:
So the good-natured Mole, having cut some slices of ham, set the hedgehogs to fry it [...]
A plate of fried ham had just been cleared and sent back for more, when the Badger entered [...]. “It must be getting on for luncheon time,” he remarked to the Otter. “Better stop and have it with us. [...]”
“Rather!” replied the Otter, winking at the Mole. “The sight of these greedy young hedgehogs stuffing themselves with fried ham makes me feel positively famished.”
The hedgehogs, who were just beginning to feel hungry again after their porridge, and after working so hard at their frying, looked timidly up at Mr Badger, but were too shy to say anything.
If the book were to come out today, I think it would most likely be classified as cosy fantasy. The seasons are properly seasonal: snow in winter; bluebells in spring; clear skies in summer; and in the autumn you can count on the leaves being properly crispéd and sere. Once out of danger or discomfort, the horror quickly fades before the spectacularly restorative powers of a hot fire and cold pie. Perhaps this was Grahame's attempt to explore the psyche of the small mammal, or perhaps he had some poor deluded notion about children not wanting unpleasantries in their fiction, but either way it is a tremendously comforting book to read—there is a sense that everything is as it should be.
Which is, of course, a dangerous position to fall into. The book is riddled throughout with the signifiers of class—half the 'insult' done to Toad by the law seems to be the simple failure to permit an aristocrat to get away with whatever he wants. Incidentally, the book has one major failing compared to the blissfully ignorant readings of my childhood: I now compulsively read Toad's lines with Boris Johnson's voice. It's certainly fitting, but I don't enjoy it. And, of course, the cast is almost entirely male, setting aside a few (typically denigrated) minor female characters. But despite these new issues, the book is in many ways improved since those days of yore, and that is a rare thing indeed.