Reviews for They Called Me Bunny

The average rating for They Called Me Bunny based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-02-10 00:00:00 Michele Sebastian David Guterson writes books that aren't just shaped by my native Pacific Northwest: they are the Northwest. His narratives wouldn't happen anywhere but the Northwest, as the geography defines the stories. Whether it is the nature of the island in Snow Falling on Cedars, or the incessant rain in Our Lady of the Forest, these stories are born out of Seattle and the areas within a hundred miles of it. Each of his books contains dozens of details that explain Washington State, while reminding us of how short Seattle's memory really is. In this tale of two friends, Neil and John, there are a lot of aspects of Seattle memory that are unique to that place. The wealth of early Boeing, and the ultra-rich of the neighborhoods on Lake Washington. Neil Countryman is not from that wealth, but his friend John William Barry is. Both boys share an affinity for survivalist-style expeditions in the rainforests of the Northwest, but that overlapping facet of their personalities narrows as time goes on. Neil settles into his life in Seattle with his wife, and moves from his blue collar background to teaching. John William, however, becomes a mountain man of the Olympic Peninsula, existing mostly off the land, his survival aided by the supplies Neil brings him. In exchange for this, John William leaves Neil the contents of his trust fund, leaving Neil on a scale of wealth associated with early Microsoft employees. Neil has no choice but to accept his friend's gift, but he still struggles to understand John William's strange brilliance, his genius, and his decision to live and die in the rainforest. After working the tourboats through the waterways in Seattle for a year, I have a different view of the city than I did when I lived and worked on the Eastside. Seattle is a blue collar town. The wealthy weren't the super-rich spawned by the software era, or even on a scale with the wealthy classes of the mid-century East Coast. The money in the area was from Boeing, from the small scale Pacific Northwest banks, from trade with Alaska. When I lived there ten years ago, the money from Microsoft had become ridiculous, and Amazon and Starbucks stock was making the situation worse. Seattle was becoming less isolated, less dependent on the trades that had kept it going for a century. Logging had died years ago, fishing was slowing down, and grunge was long since dead. In "The Other", Guterson takes the reader back to that smaller scale Seattle, and compares it against the Seattle of today. It is a story of Neil Countryman's quest to understand his strange friend, but it is also a testament to a Washington that is rapidly changing.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-06-27 00:00:00 Jose Hernandez This book reminded me of what it was like to be out in wilderness all those years with the boys I grew up with. Remote, scrabbling around in the underbrush wondering where the hell we were exactly, reading topo maps, reveling in the small ecstasies of just a bite of food, made so much more special by the fact that we had toted it on our backs for miles, and know there will be nothing else until we tramp back out again. It also reminded me of the passions of a misanthropic and dissatisfied youth. Hours on end of stoned diatribes, railing against the confines of Western Civilization, picking apart the philosophical underpinnings of our upbringings, extolling the virtues of tuning in, turning on, dropping out. We had friends who went to live in trees, or teepees, or wandered around the woods in the Sierras for months at a time. Until snows came and drove them indoors. A few of us died out there, at the dicey edge of things. Slick roads, avalanche, a stray rock. most of us survived, and settled into sedate lives by comparison. Children, or not; careers, or not; happy, or not. This story turns in it's hands expertly those elements, and others: madness, history, friendship, love, survival, chance. It is quiet like the forests of the Hoh River, where it is mostly set. It travels to the core, like the damp there. It is folded back upon itself, with care and precision, like the folding of an origami crane. Watching his hands work you don't know what beauty will emerge, but are not entirely surprised when, later, it lifts it's wings suddenly and flies.