Review by Woodrow Phoenix
Fluffy Pulcino is a white rabbit. Unlike all other rabbits you will have come across, Fluffy is a thinking and feeling individual, as psychologically complete, fully conscious and self-aware as anyone you know. He’s also the adopted ‘son’ of a nice and unremarkable man called Michael Pulcino, and has spent his life growing up in a quiet flat in the ordinary setting of Brockley, in South London. Fluffy’s early years were explored in the self-titled book Fluffy published in 2008. How to Make Life Better When It Feels Like it’s Getting Worse is Simone Lia’s return, eighteen years later, to the strange situation of a self-aware rabbit in a human world.
There’s a striking visual intelligence applied to the design of this book. To anchor her protagonist in the real world, Lia’s drawings are extremely naturalistic renderings of place. A chunky version of a Herge-like clear line style reproduces every detail of the streets, houses and room interiors that Fluffy moves through, in beautifully intricate compositions given depth and weight by subtle watercoloured shading. To prevent this huge amount of detail from becoming distracting or overwhelming, everything, including people, is coloured in shades of blue while Fluffy is white, which pops him out against the backgrounds in a simple and very effective way. Any clothing Fluffy wears is red, which vibrates against the blue so that every drawing is instantly clear and dynamic. On a thematic level these clever graphic choices show how the rabbit is part of the world around him but always distinct from it, which underpins everything that follows.
Things start with Fluffy addressing the reader directly: “Hello. Have you ever felt that things might be getting worse in your life but you have no idea what to do about it? Does making a decision scare you?” This all sounds promising, but a few statements later we’re already drifting off course. “If you’re thinking: Fluffy isn’t qualified to write a book like this. he’s no guru or philosopher or professional of any kind… what does he know about anything? You’re probably right and now I’m worried that I’ve overpromised… But we’ve started this now. Let’s keep going and hope for the best,” he admits. So it’s a kind of autobiography and the self that needs helping is Fluffy. Michael and his mum both feature, but it’s all from Fluffy’s perspective; his inability to fit in at school, the constant knowledge he’s not like other people, his drift into obsessive social media consumption, and his strategies for self-protection that alienate everyone around him. There are jokes, there is confusion, there’s sadness and it’s all oddly, jerkily one step forward and one step back. Fluffy is confused, selfish and contradictory. He still has a lot of growing up to do.
Clearly, How to Make Life Better When It Feels Like it’s Getting Worse has no answers for you to life’s essential mysteries. What it does have is an absorbing hour or two in the company of a funny, frustrating and very human protagonist who wants what we all want. Let’s hope he gets there.
