Theme - Nursery Crime: ‘Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse’ by Robert Rankin

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This month’s group was a real mixture of people who had either read the whole book, read just a couple of chapters or looked at the cover and read a synopsis. Whatever their engagement with the book itself, everyone took part in a lively and considered discussion of the plot, characters, themes and the (rather unusual) genre in general.

 

A slow burner for many, but the general consensus was that it was worth getting past the first two chapters to enter a world where economic expansion in the nursery rhyme market means that the wholesome Toy Town has morphed into a seedy Toy City. Supported by Eddie Bear, Jack sets off to discover who is killing off the nursery characters and why.

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Not for the faint-hearted or easily offended, the deaths are gruesome but fun to consider how they relate back to their respective rhymes – think Humpty Dumpty being boiled in his pool, or Jack Spratt being fried in his ex-wife’s restaurant. This inevitably led to the group colluding to bring together our half-baked recollections of the nursery rhymes of our childhood and a Google search or two (no-one could remember Little Boy Blue).

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As discussions came to a close the group voted to give the book an average score of 3.5/5.

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Recommended further reading:

If you enjoyed our theme of Nursery Crime you could also try:

 

• ‘The Big Over Easy’ and ‘The Fourth Bear’, both by Jasper Fforde.

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If you like the idea of subverting the old fairy tales, but our particular choice of book didn’t interest you, you could try the following:

 

• ‘Transformations’ by Anne Sexton – a collection of poetic retellings of fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm

• ‘The Bloody Chamber’ by Angela Carter – a collection of short stories that share a common theme of being closely based upon fairy tales or folk tales.