Watership Down heard of." Fred Inglis, in his book "The Promise of Happiness: Value and meaning in children's fiction", praises the author’s use of prose to express the strangeness of ordinary human inventions from the rabbits' perspective. "Watership Down"'s universal motifs of liberation and self-determination have led to the tendency of minority groups to read their own narrative into the novel, despite the author's assurance (in 2005) that it "was never intended to become some sort of allegory or parable." The author Rachel Kadish, reflecting on her own superimposition of the founding of Israel onto "Watership Down", has remarked "Turns out plenty
Down by the River (novel) old weapons were sharp and effective; perhaps she comes too late to this particular fight." Though "Kirkus Reviews" praised the novel as "one of the most ferocious indictments of Gaelic life and culture since "The Playboy of the Western World,"" it describes the novel as not entirely satisfying with a "propagandistic tone and two-dimensional characterizations." Down by the River (novel) Down by the River is a 1997 novel by Irish novelist Edna O'Brien. The novel depicts the response of a local community the a girl, Mary, abuse by her father being exposed to their local community when she tries to