Here is an elegant little book in hardcover with a deceptively simple title: The Rabbit & the Squirrel. Barely 76 pages of text and artistic paintings in watercolour, a quick read reveals it is actually a fable for adults with layers of interpretation.
The inseparable friends Squirrel and Rabbit love dancing together in their favourite hiding place on a little black rock, away from the world. ‘Here they might have been anyone but they chose to be only their own selves, broken, beautiful.’ They vent their fears, joys and sorrows without inhibition…but these good times cannot last, for destiny has other plans. The vivacious Squirrel must be married off by her concerned parents, who strongly disapprove of her friendship with the rakish Rabbit. She rejects a chain of suitors—Chipmunk who is ‘a dentist’s nightmare’, Owl who is ‘wise’ but ‘creepy as hell’… while arguing she’s been made to feel like ‘a can of beans with a sell-by date’. She is soon married off to Count Boar with a fat dowry of a bag of pine nuts and 3 kilos of cherry tomatoes.