The Death of Bunny Munro: A Novel

The Death Of Bunny Munro, by Nick Cave – Although they are both good books, written by a lover of the English language with a knack for word selection, Nick Cave’s second novel is just about as different from his previous book And The As Saw The Angel as two books can be. The Death Of Bunny Munro is short, brief (meaning it takes place over the course of five days), un-ambitious (in a good way – many great books also takes place over the course of a few days), action-based, modern, most likely film-able (I found myself contemplating casting for the other characters – Bunny, of course, would be played by Cave himself, or Sean Penn) and full of loathsome characters. Well, the latter is true of The As Saw The Angel as well, but these characters are loathsome in their own ways. Bunny is a horror of an individual – a terrible husband, a terrible father, a drunk, a vandal, a misanthrope – and while he never stops trying to be cool in his own nihilistic little way, the only people who really think he’s cool are a cluster of nympos, a guy called Poodle (!!!), and his nine-year-old son (although after a while even the boy, as well as the nympos, start to show their doubts). Like a Bad Lieutenant, he shambles from one car wreck to another, gulping whisky and smoking Lambert & Butler cigarettes. Nutty. And strangely, by the end of the book it seems like it’s the nine-year-old who is the coolest character of them all. Nice!The prose is rich, almost purple: “Bunny realizes that something has changed in his wife’s voice, the soft cellos have gone and a high, rasping violin has been added, played by an escaped ape or something.” Or “He hears [the chirping of starlings] now above the bombination of the air conditioner and it is sufficiently apocalyptic to almost arouse his cuiosity. But not quite.” You get all sorts of nutty ponderings from a booze-addled mind: “He wonders, with a shudder, if the disconnectedness he felt while crewing River is a permanent condition and he considers the idea that perhaps he is washed up as a world-class crockman. Maybe Libby’s suicide has jinxed him. Cursed him, maybe. It is certainly possible. Stories abound about people being put off their game by seemingly innocuous and unconnected events. Poodle told Bunny only recently about a local puzzy-hound from Portslade who went from stud to dud after attending a Celine Dion concert. He just couldn’t get it up any more. He told Poodle it was like trying to stuff a dead canary in a cash dispenser. In the end he hung up his tackle and became a landscape gardener in Walberswick. Chilling stuff.” Or how about the chapter that starts off with “Bunny sits in McDonald’s with a defibrillated hand-on due to the fact that underneath the cashier’s red-and-yellow uniform she has hardly any clothes on. The cashier wears a nametag that says ‘Emily’ and she keeps glancing across at Bunny with huge vacant eyes and wiggling all around. She has a black lacquered beehive, a conga line of raw acne across her forehead and a fagina. Bunny thinks she is similar to Kate Moss, only shorter, fatter and more ugly.” Then, when things are really bad, “A spavinated old vagrant hobbles past wearing a flesh-coloured eye-patch and sodden rags wrapped around his impossibly swollen feet. He has soiled the front of his trousers and wears an undersized T-shirt that shows the matted fur on his stomach and says, ‘STUFF HAPPENS WHEN YOU PARTY NAKED’. He taps the tin cup against the window of [Bunny’s car] and peers inside scrutinizes the occupants through his single crazed eye, shakes his head in consternation and shuffles off into the rain.” Crazy!! But the madness doesn’t stop there - it even gets literary:“Auden said it all. “We must love one another or die."Mrs Brooks’ misshapen hands twitch on the armrests of her chair like alien spiders and her rings make an unsettling clicking sound. Outside Bunny can hear the squawk of seagulls and the low drone of the seafront traffic.“Have you read Auden, Mr Munro?”Bunny sighs and rolls his eyes and snaps open his sample case.“Bunny,” he says. “Call me Bunny.”“Have you read Auden, Bunny?”Bunny feels a needle of irritation tweak the nerve over his left eye.“Only on Hallowe’en, Mrs Brooks,” says Bunny, and the old lady laughs like a little girl.Given the title, we know at least that we must prepare for Bunny’s death the whole time, and like A Chronicle Of A Death Foretold or Sunset Boulevard we’re quite relieved when it finally happens. I’m not sure why Cave wanted to take this route – maybe it’s because we know that ALL of his heroes are doomed/damned anyway. But the journey there is sad and interesting, a great read, and Cave handles the whole thing with a fair amount of surreality and vagueness. Nice one, Nick!The book is bizarrely full of sadistic vulgar comments about Kylie Minogue (who seems to be a friend of Caves) and Avril Lavigne (not sure if he’s ever met her), to the extent that Cave (the author) apologises at the end of the book for the horrible things he wrote about these women while in character. Interesting.A good read – check it out!!

The book brings about a dark and twisted story about a sick man. Over all, I'm very happy. Nick Caves' narration makes it all the better. Definitely emotionally provocative though, and I wouldn't reccomend it to just anyone.

Exactly as described, and better.Seller took a LOT of care with the pacakaging.A++

Nick Cave is a genius. A darkly thoughtful story of humanity through the eyes of a lunatic. Scary book looking at the darkness in all of us.

Fans of Post-Punk singer extraordinaire Nick Cave would do well to explore his novel, The Death of Bunny Munro. Like his recent screenplays and his best songs, Cave creates characters that are at once realistic and fantastic. The novel surely provides insight into the dark art and mind of Bad Seed, Nick Cave. While certainly not for everyone, the dark perversions of Bunny Munro including his fantasies of Kylie Minogue and Avril Lavigne leave the indoctrinated reconsidering the Murder Ballad sung with Kylie, "Where the Wild Roses Grow." Where does Bunny end and where does Cave begin? What was Cave actually thinking, while singing the murderous love ballad with the target of Bunny Monroe's sexual fantasies? Can one create such a sexually obsessed character without sharing one's darkest thoughts and fantasies? While sex and death are dominant themes throughout, they are juxtaposed with father / son relationships - Bunny and his son, and Bunny and his father. While Bunny proceeds through life, both the dull and painful, he manages to survive only through the escape of sex and alcohol. In the end the book may be about redemption - but if so, it is a self-serving redemption. It is redemption that comes not from the grace of God, but rather through the forgiveness of his "victims." If Bunny Monroe were to pray it would surely be to Minogue's gold hot pants or his favorite parts of the female anatomy. Bunny Monroe's redemption, like his life, is purely on his own terms.

Great!

This book was recommended to me by a friend from Romania and I was very surprised to know that it was translated into Romanian. I looked it up on Amazon and the seller had great reviews so I immediately placed an order. To my surprise I got it delivered in a couple of days and it was brand new as advertised. I recommend it to anyone daring enough to read something very unconventional.

A brilliant but ultimately disturbing book. Like anything from Nick Cave it is challenging but completely engaging.

I found the main character was missing. He didn't exist; the character wasn't fleshed out (ironic considering how obsessed he is about flesh). As others also found, most of the characters were 2D. The only redeeming feature was the cameo appearance of his dad towards the end of the book. Now there was a well-drawn character. If not for him - 1 star.I don't mind an unlikable anti-hero if he has character but this one didn't. Thank goodness it's on my Kindle and I can't pass it on to a friend. Others thought this was a humorous book but I don't share that opinion either.

Nick Cave is really completely mad!!! How does he come up with all these crazy episodes?! Sometimes I had such a fit of laughter that I had tears in my eyes! Awesome!

It's easy to understand why this book might polarise opinion. It's fairly stark, with a strikingly unpleasant main character. It's not particularly pleasant reading in many ways, but it is believable in it's portrayal of a slow but steady moral decline, and has enough things to make the reader take a step back and try to understand. The damaged relationship between both sets of father and son is fairly fascinating, for example. I'm not sure it's a book to recommend? If you're intrigued, give it a go, if not, best stay away.

Fantastic book but not for the faint hearted! Very explicit language and content, but for me, real, honest, gritty and totally refreshing and mesmerising. It stayed with me for days as the messages from, what is on the surface a simple story, processed through. It would go down as one of my top ten books of all time.

Massive Nick Cave fan so I have to warn you, I was already going to like this, however once i'd thought about it some more I only liked it so much because of the fandom, it's an OK, bumpy book which repeats itself but on the whole enjoyable.