Book Review: "The White Hare" by Jane Johnson

Now, you all know by now that I love folk literature. This book has 'folk' written all over it and is probably a contender for one of the best books I have read all year. I had not really heard of Jane Johnson before reading this book and I am about 10'000x more interested in reading everything she has written and everything she will write now that I have completed The White Hare. I was not just completely won over by the storyline but all the folk references (and the Alice in Wonderland references) worked into the plot and woven around were immaculate. It felt absolutely magical to read. I would highly recommend this to all of my fellow folk lovers out there. It is just incredible and ever so immersive.

We start off with women in 1954. Magda, who is a woman moved from Poland to England and thus brought with her a sher dislike of her own country by comparison. She raises her daughter to be quintessentially English now that they are in a 'better' country (according to her), but is not maternal in any way - when in Poland she would give her daughter to her own mother to be raised by her. Magda can be harsh and seething, upper class and snobby but sometimes you have to wonder whether this excessive snobbiness shown in her present times within the text is because she lost her husband in the second world war.

Then we have our narrator, the daughter, Mila. Mila, is a mother herself of a five-year-old girl named Janey. Mila and her daughter have moved with their mother to the countryside in order to work a house as a guesthouse for income. Mila despises her mother more than likes her, having frequent arguments and commenting on her brutish and rude character. Janey is a precocious child who loves collecting things. When on the way to their new residence, the car makes a swerve out of the road as Magda sees a white hare. From this moment forth, Janey and her toy rabbit (aptly named 'rabbit') become more sedated. Janey comments every now and again that she heard people talk about the house as if it is cursed and Mila cannot seem to find anyone who can tell her its history.

When Janey gets sick, Mila must venture out into the town for medicine and when she does, she learns of a white lady, a terrible thing that happened at the house and the act of herbal remedies of which might cure Janey instead of the aspirin Mila is desperately hunting for. She meets a priest who gives her a history of the village from the stone age to the present and tells her that the house in which she resides was built in the Medieval Era. It is a strange thing that does not explain why things have started to go missing around the home such as Magda's silver cigarette case and Mila's reading book.

On top of this, when they first come to the home, they meet a man named Jack. Jack seems to know a lot about the woodlands and the forests so that when Janey accidentally loses her toy Rabbit, they can look for it up the stream together. Jack becomes close with Janey, possibly as a replacement for her father who did something terrible to her mother. Janey even brings Jack to the home when Magda hits her across her face and Jack reasons with Magda, scathingly he rebukes her for abusing Janey and recovers what it is she has lost.

One thing I have to say I enjoyed about this book is not just the folk elements but the idea that everything is connected. Each character seems to have a weird connection to the village in a way that they won't elaborate on and everyone is aptly obtuse about it. It is enough to peak Mila's interest, but it is also enough to keep the reader interested for a long, long while. Mila can't understand what is going on, Janey becomes more and more subdued, drawing an image of the same thing over and over again and Magda (if she had not already) is losing her mind from contradiction after contradiction.

When the wardrobe swings away from Mila, the whole story starts to enter the void. So many different inspirations from so many different folk tales come to make this fantastic novel about the weirdness of emotion in a place unfamiliar and how unfamiliar it can really get. Something is hidden in the walls and something is taking Janey. When Mila was warned about how the house is older than it looks, she must go and find her daughter with no safety net, no information, just a void of nothingness.

I love the way this book is written as it reads like a novel from the 1950s. It adapts to its time so well and makes no effort to be over the top. The writing is very fluent and decorative, it is a beautifully written book with some very good differentiations between dialects. I am always a person who likes a lot of description and atmosphere - I loved this book for everything that it was. It was a brilliant experience of folk, the gothic, the idea of pagan vs catholic ideals and the way in which people keep secrets for the very safety of others. I adored it. I am sure you will too.