‘Can I take your coat?’ Cupcake offers. I turn to her. She’s looking at me so hopefully. So willing to take a coat I’m not wearing, I almost want to give her my skin.
Mona Awad, Bunny
Bunny by Mona Awad is a delightfully bizarre and experimental book that is dense with laugh-out-loud satire. Reading this was like running through a fever dream, except everything clicked at the end, leading to some sort of revelation. Trust me, this book is not what it seems like it is. The message hidden behind how the story is literally told explains much of the initial shortcomings of the novel, such as the seemingly contrived characters and the hyperactive anxiety, gore, and emotion that covers the pages (think psychological disorders).
This book takes place in Warrens: a prestigious Ivy-league school located in New England. There, Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program, where she is left out by the almost cult-like group of girls who call each other ‘Bunny.’ She can’t stand their childishness, their immaturity, just how twee each one is and shares her hatred of them with her one and only best friend, Ava. But when Samantha finally receives an invite to the Bunnies’ “Smut Salon”, a gathering to be held at their houses, she feels inexplicably drawn to accept the invite.
Mona Awad has a way with words that makes everything seem so palpable. Everything is colored in such a unique way which makes this novel difficult to describe. The book initially felt very similar to the premise of The Secret History by Donna Tartt, but it begins to gain a unique, fairytale-like twist that is hectic and sporadic. Samantha’s emotions are always taut and eloquently expressed in the most wordsmith-like way possible.
However, this book fell out in terms of characters. Most characters here are one-dimensional, easily swayed by an outside factor (in this case, a boy). Given their position as grad students in a supposedly prestigious, ivy-tier school, it’s questionable whether Mona Awad showed their place in the school rather than merely telling.
~3.5 stars
Written Jun 24, 2023
