Previously the worst I could say about Fforde's books is that they didn't amount to much--a few goofy jokes without any lasting substance. In The Constant Rabbit, Fforde aims for substance but ends up with a lot of nothing, which may be even worse. The basic premise is that some fifty years ago, several rabbits suddenly became anthropomorphized--human-sized with human awareness to boot. What followed was years of prejudice, discrimination, and abuse couched in euphemistic terms. The book is obviously intended to be a satire of racism and xenophobia, as characters overtly and subtly project their fears on rabbits.
When best used, satire highlights failings that the reader may be unaware of us, shedding new light on societal ills. The Constant Rabbit, on the other hand, just repeats standard racist lines, but about rabbits! I suppose it's supposed to be funny to hear discriminatory lines about rabbit habits rather than the habits of people from other cultures, but that humor isn't serving any greater good. Fforde acknowledges this in a conversation late in the book, where the rabbit Connie argues, "...maybe it's just satire for comedy's sake and nothing else... or even more useless, satire that provokes a few guffaws but only low to middling outrage--but it coupled with more talk and no action. A sort of... empty cleverness." Kudos to Fforde for being so explicit, but I still think of the Bo Burnham line "Self-awareness absolves you of nothing."
Overall I was disappointed with the novel. Sure, some of the lines have the "empty cleverness" that Fforde is so good at, but I couldn't help feeling he was using racism to further his book, rather than using his book to combat racism.
