The Death of Bunny Munro, Nick Cave
Faber and Faber Inc., 278 pages
Bunny Munro is not a hero. He is a philandering door-to-door cosmetics salesman who has many vices and loves to fantasize about Avril Lavigne’s vagina. In the opening of The Death of Bunny Munro, Bunny sits on a hotel bed, downing nips while talking to his severely depressed wife on the phone. After promising to be home early the next morning, Bunny sleeps with a prostitute, and then a server at the hotel restaurant, and after arousing himself again, masturbates in a public restroom.
When Bunny makes his way home, he finds his wife hanging from the window in their bedroom, wearing the orange nightgown she wore on her wedding night. Not knowing what to do next Bunny continuously drinks, smokes and gets off.
After burying his wife, Bunny Munro loads his client list and his nine year old son, Bunny Junior, into his yellow Punto and starts working. Bunny Junior loves his dad very much, and while their road trip started out as a fun vacation, after a few days the child senses that they have no real direction and that this trip will last forever.
While Bunny and his boy are traveling north, a horned, red-faced killer is traveling south, terrorizing the country. Also haunting Bunny is the ghost of his dead wife.
The Death of Bunny Munro is crooner-artist-writer Nick Cave’s first novel since 1989’s And the Ass Saw the Angel, and is a much easier read.
Bunny does some horrific things that force the reader to detest him, but as Bunny runs away from all the love he feels for people, there are times that one feels sorry for the “poor man”. Bunny’s narrative begins eloquently and gradually spirals downward to a hectic, surreal end.
The depraved debauchery of Bunny Munro would be too much for the reader to care about him at all if it wasn’t penned by Nick Cave. He has always had a way of making the audience loathe yet respect his villains like Stagger Lee and Lottie, the curse of Millhaven.
The Death of Bunny Munro is a quick read that is horrific, darkly funny and moving all in one hot pink hardcover.
The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave
Faber and Faber Inc., 278 pages
Review by Alyson
Bunny Munro is not a hero. He’s a philandering door-to-door cosmetics salesman with many vices, who loves to fantasize about Avril Lavigne’s vagina. In the opening of The Death of Bunny Munro, Bunny sits on a hotel bed, downing nips while talking to his severely depressed wife on the phone. After promising to be home early the next morning, Bunny sleeps with a prostitute, and then a server at the hotel restaurant, and after arousing himself again, masturbates in a public restroom. (more…)
