Bunny Modern [Paperback]

David Bowman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1999

The trade paperback edition of David Bowman's prizewinning first novel, Let the Dog Drive, has developed a cult following. Now Bowman's exuberantly praised second novel -- a hard-boiled comedy about love, abduction, and child care, set in a future where electricity has disappeared and fertility is on the wane, but human passions are as messy as ever -- is also in trade paperback.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Imagine killer nannies patrolling the streets of New York, their baby carriages bristling with automatic weapons, even as prowling, infertile parent-wannabes make desperate grabs at the carriages' precious cargo.... This is the premise of David Bowman's novel, Bunny Modern, an apocalyptic millenarian view of New York in the 21st century. The city is without electricity, a phenomenon some attribute to electrons flying backward in time to that day when Bob Dylan went electric at the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival. This unfortunate reversal in the electrical current also seems to have affected sperm production, which accounts for the plummeting birthrate in New York and, in turn, the gun-toting nannies. Bowman laid claim to this sort of manic, hallucinatory fiction in his first novel, Let the Dog Drive, and Bunny Modern takes it to dizzying new heights. Sex, drugs, and appliance worship--dystopia never looked so intriguing. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In the postmillennial world of this work, electricity has disappeared, taking with it love and fertility and creating a society where armed, drug-taking nannies guard the few remaining children from babynappers. Here, former child actor Dylan becomes fixated on Clare, a young nanny caring for Soda, the oddly named, oddly affecting infant son of elderly New Jersey parents. Fusing the hard-boiled thriller with the literary novel and blending in references to everything from silent films to old Bob Dylan songs, Bowman creates a parallel universe where people wear clothes named for 19th-century authors and build shrines to their appliances. While this work is undeniably an imaginative tour de force, readers may be left feeling a bit in the dark about what Bowman is ultimately up to here. Shortlisted in the Granta "Best American Novelists Under Forty," issue, Bowman won New York University's Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Let the Dog Die in 1994.?Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, Andover, Mass.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books; 1st edition (March 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316102024
• ISBN-13: 978-0316102025
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,205,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Have some fun with it!, January 25, 2001

By 

Daniel Van Beek (Chicago IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bunny Modern (Paperback)

Bowman tells a "tall tale" in his typical fashion-lots of wacky situations, all with much more than meets the eye. Many people have panned this book in recent reviews. I don't believe they get the point. It's about a fun read, mixed with the commentaries on literature, human dependence on electricity, and the joys of life and creating new life. However, it does show the dark side of humankind: drugs, violence, greed, and the lack of personal warmth that leads to the strange and failed relationships in this book.

Although Bowman's "let the dog drive" is my personal favorite, this picks up where that left off: a wild ride through many different worlds of thought. So many "what ifs" to make you think! Bowman's style should be cherished, because it is rare. He has parts of Vonnegut, Garcia Marquez, and Earl from creative writing class. Read it today and don't listen to those who "didn't get it".

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad news when the synopsis is more interesting than the book, April 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Bunny Modern: A Novel (Hardcover)

Vengeance, killer nannies, a future with no electricity--a great idea, but a suprisingly unintersting story in all. Bowman tried to be so "weird", the book was pretentious. As short as the book is, if my New Year's Resolution wasn't to finish every book I started, I never would have gotten past the second chapter. If nothing else the design cover is nice.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, November 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Bunny Modern: A Novel (Hardcover)

Bowman's style is engaging at first, but once one gets past the cleverness of his set-up, things fall apart. The relationship between the narrator and Clare, the nanny protagonist, seems promising when he is observing her from afar, but falls apart once they actually meet in the flesh. Still, i enjoyed the book until the not-so-climactic confrontation in the offices of NBC, a scene which lasted about two chapters longer than it should have.