Watership Down science fiction writer and conservative social commentator writing in the "National Review", declared that the novel was "pleasant enough, but it has about the same intellectual firepower as Dumbo." He pilloried it further: ""Watership Down" is an adventure story, no more than that: rather a swashbuckling crude one to boot. There are virtuous rabbits and bad rabbits: if that’s allegory, "Bonanza" is an allegory." John Rowe Townsend notes that the book quickly achieved such a high popularity despite the fact that it "came out at a high price and in an unattractive jacket from a publisher who had hardly been
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