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Review

With Bob the Book, David Pratt has reinvented the anthropomorphic genre that was so successful in books such as Watership Down and Black Beauty, and with this deeply charming book he does it in the best possible way.

Bob is a gay text book who sits on a shelf and longs to be bought. One day he gets to sit next to Moishe, another text book in the GLBT studies section, and the two form a friendship, and fall in love. As with all good romances, conflict ensues and Moishe is sold without Bob and Bob ends up in a closing down sale. What follows as we travel with Bob from hand to hand is a gorgeous, at times acidly wicked, blend of biting satire, social and historical commentary from a literary and GLBT perspective, but all done in such a wonderful way that you can't help but be won over. In the same way that Sewell exposed the terrible plight of the treatment of Victorian horses, Pratt shines light on the snobbishness, the silliness and the wonderful idiocy of parts of the literary world, and pokes fun at it one one page, then--as the best books should--break your heart on another page.

The secondary characters, both paper-made and human, are many and wonderful. From Angela, the paperback copy of Mansfield Park who holds her head up despite not being hardback or “the big Austen” book, to poor Neil, the too-sensitive and tragedy ridden book of gay poetry, each one is beautifully written and each has something delightful to bring to the story.

Charming is the perfect description of Bob the Book, because it charmed me, and is charming. I didn't expect to like the concept of a world of living books, but I was entirely won over. If you can escape into the world of Toy Story and if you are a reader or a writer—or both—you will find something in this book to laugh at, cry at, love. Bob and his friends will stay with you for a long, long time.

 -- Erastes