This is another book I bought on spec. I have to say that I didn't think that much to it, certainly it wasn't "A deleriously funny book" like the Observer said. It was OK, but I felt at the end that it would have worked a lot better as either a comic strip or an adult cartoon. It deals with an anthropomorphised crow and penguin who demand equal rights for animals who all start talking and busting out of zoos, etc. It's about how these animals end up prey to all the weaknesses that the human race has imposed on itself, but that's not exactly earth shattering as a concept and as a moral it's so blindingly obvious, it really grates.

Had this book been re-presented in a graphical form, it would have made the anthropomorphism of the tale easier to take since, as it stands, it's on an uneasy balance between animal and human that doesn't work. Sorry.

Ben gives it:

Price: £6.99 (paperback)
Published by: Picador (ISBN 0-330-34361-0)

last updated: 14th June 1997