“I loved Emma Rabbit. You shouldn’t be ashamed of your beloved.

Love had come stealthily. Love had waited, lain in wait and attacked when I least expected it.

I’d been defenseless.

The first days I didn’t dare say anything. We attended to our roles as usual. She asked how the night had been, I answered that it had been good. She asked if I wanted to have the window open or closed. I answered closed.

But I answered with a joy that I couldn’t rein in. Love made me strong and exhilarated. It didn’t take very long before I told her how I felt.

I was afraid of how she would react.

In the kitchen with Mother and Father, she was the one who was afraid. Why didn’t she let her eyes sparkle and reveal all their warmth and joy? When Mother asked about her ambitions and mentioned that I’d told her about her paintings, why didn’t she say anything?”

— From Amberville, page 183.

To read the above quotation, one wouldn’t suspect that it refers to a hard-boiled teddy bear’s feelings for his beloved stuffed rabbit, or that the “eyes [that] sparkle and reveal all their warmth and joy” are really hard plastic. This is the peculiar spin that author Tim Davys brings to his characters, easily enough forgotten as they are sipping vodka or pursuing other all-too-human activities.

Tim Davys is the pseudonym of a Swedish author. Amberville was originally published in Sweden in 2007, and recently re-released in the United States. His web page seems designed to obfuscate rather than to enlighten any reader looking for psychological insights into his novel’s characters, prompting some bloggers to conjecture as to his true identity. Foreign rights to this novel have sold in more than 20 countries, suggesting that there is global interest in the plights of stuffed creatures.

In the words of Brad Meltzer (bestselling author of The Book of Lies), “When you’re tired of run-of-the-mill fiction, it’s time to read Amberville… a mystery that’s completely original.”

PopMatters review (with excerpts)

His new book, Lanceheim, is the second of a four-part series to take place in Mollisan Town. Whereas Watership Down by Richard Adams at least partly took place in a real location, the rabbits' destination, a hill in the north of Hampshire, England; the tales of Mollisan Town seem to take place in what could be any large city, similar to a Gotham City or Metropolis of comic book lore.