Customer Reviews

Death of Bunny Munro

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This novel is bound to spark lots of different reactions because it is provocative and explicit and strange and dangerous and incredibly funny and genuinely challenging. But I hope that the beauty of the writing and the seriousness of the book's moral dimensions are not overlooked because of the "controversial" aspects of the novel. For this second novel by Nick Cave is a major piece of literature that makes so much of what is being written today in this country look anodyne and flaccid.

At the emotional heart of this death trip of a ride is this extremely tender and movingly captured relationship between the Bunny Munro of the title and his nine year old son Bunny Junior. It has real depth and is utterly convicing and so when you do get to the end of the rollercoaster you feel literally spent.

But along the way you will experience some of the sharpest and funniest writing you are likely to find this year. Fans of Cave's music will lap it up like cream (and the audio book which he has recorded with an accompanying soundtrack by him and fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis) but it should also win over a lot of new fans because it is so damn good. The novel's protoganist, the travelling salesman Bunny Munro, is an unforgettable and utterly flawed and tragic anti-hero that is going to live forever.

Rock on Mr Cave and thanks for writing such a stunning book. And please don't leave it another twenty years before you give us a third novel!

Bunny Munro, the hero of this somewhat strange novel, is a traveling salesman promoting his samples of beauty products to women in small towns around Brighton in Southern England. Visiting an oddly disparate collection of women he does much more than selling his wares. In his self-assessment he is the irresistible charmer and seducer, thanks in part to his "lovelock", that, heavily pomaded, winks enticingly at any woman he encounters. Since the suicide of his "beloved" wife Libby, his stable framework is crumbling. He feels constantly observed by somebody and suffers from premonitions of death... In desperation he hits the road to escape and to do the only thing he knows well...

Seen as a farce and satire on human, in particular male, behaviour, one might get some enjoyment out of reading the travails of Bunny and his women. The lurid descriptions, however, become predictable and repetitive... No doubt, he is a sex addict of a certain kind more than anything else; if no suitable object for his almost constant availability is in his field of vision, he gets himself into the mood for the next encounter by imagining Avril Lavigne's "mother of all" private parts.

I have to admit that this is not my kind of book. Still, I have to respect Cave's writing excellence when it comes to evoking the seedy to depressing atmosphere of the apartments, houses or restaurants and their neighbourhoods that Bunny visits. With a few deft strokes he also captures the essence of the people the salesman meets. When later on in the story he recalls images of his characters, and in particular the women's more or less attractive body parts, the reader will also remember the individuals and the encounters the hero had with them.

But, life is more complicated, exemplified by Bunny junior, Bunny's nine-year old quiet, encyclopedia-reading son who misses his mum terribly. He has to "learn the ropes" and travel with Bunny from one appointment to another, of course, sitting in the car outside. The father-son relationship, or the more or less successful efforts by both to have such a relationship, adds a more serious aspect to Cave's novel. Does it work? For me the relationship between the two did not salvage the book. Without giving away developments towards the end, one can say that roles between the two will change over time. A quote on the back book flap mentions Cormac McCarthy (and Franz Kafka!). Anybody who has read The Road (Movie Tie-in Edition 2009) (Vintage International) where the father-son relationship is central and also carries the novel beautifully, will find any such comparison here out of place. [Friederike Knabe]

OK, I've been a Nick Cave fan for many, many years now. Too many to claim. I read his first novel, And The Ass Saw the Angel, when I was in my twenties. I fell in love with Eucrid Eucrows' manic cataloging of random objects, his utterly absurd "aloneness" in a ficticious landscape that was a cross between the swampy American South of the early 20th century and the brutality of settlement life in early Australia.

And then came The Death of Bunny Munro, which I have now read in my early fourties. I found this new novel to be a relentless, one note narrative. Considering the energetic complexity of it's author, I was shocked to find the title character, Bunny Munro, to be so utterly lacking in depth. OK, we get it. Bunny's addiction to sex and self destruction is all consuming; at the peril of his wife, to the physical and psychological detriment of his son, and most certainly of his own soul. But this point is made glaringly evident within the first few chapters. From there, the story does not progress. This same dark chord is struck over and over in each successive chapter with the same effect on the reader. Bludgeoned, devastated, having lost all faith in humanity and the genetic bond between father and son, the chapters plod on and on. The reader is not expecting redemption at this point, just some other angle to the story, some irony, some progression, something. But it never comes.

The way The Death of Bunny Munro wraps up is remeniscent of Patrick Suskind's Perfume. In both novels, quite unredeemable characters get a very public, somewhat nonesensical comeuppance that could only exist in the rich fantasy life of its characters. Bunny's is consistently flat and predictable, whereas Jean Baptiste's leads the reader to some kind of absurd epiphany about the power of the most underexplored of the human senses.

Hopefully, Cave's third novel will be the charm.

I have seen this man live several times and have followed his writing, acting, art, singing career for over 20 years and still I am not sure what I think is his major talent. His writing makes me see and feel other worlds so vivid I am there (often wishing I was not), His art makes me want to blind myself, His acting floors me, his Song the sound track for every heart break of my 40 years ... I am honestly glad that when I did get to meet him in Auckland New Zealand several years ago that I personally felt no draw to him for if I had I could easily have become his Mark Chapman.
There is nothing this man does that I would not wish the world to see or hear.


"I Thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf mutes." - Catcher in the rye (J. D. Salinger).

Is the book pretentious? Yes of course! Nick Cave has gloried in the overly embellished cliche throughout his career. But this book is great because it is VERY funny. His writing is so much more selective, controlled and refined than his previous novel (When the Ass...) which got on my nerves because it was exactly the book I had expected from him at the time and read like he was just interested in spreading a large dollop of his public persona across the pages. But in Bunny he has created a surreal tale and a monstrous character - albeit a rather unlikely one - and I found I was not thinking on every page that this is Nick Cave writing. In other words, in spite of maintaining his extreme approach to narrative that characterises all his song writing from the Birthday Party days onwards, this book doesn't seem like Nick Cave exhibiting himself. It tells a sad and funny story, and it made me laugh, from start to finish. Yes, I agree with those reviewers who say it is not a deep or complex book, and it is certainly depraved. But like great comedy, it is also moving, tragic and memorable. Overall, fun.

Sorry, I loved And the Ass Saw the Angel and as a big Nick Cave fan I was predisposed to Bunny Munro. However, and to my surprise, I found it tedious and pointless. The main character is not interesting, and the story has no arc -- it's just a smear... If I needed to remind myself why I like Cave I'd read And the Ass again. That, like his music, is extraordinary. This is something else.

This novel left me crying for hours, i couldn't peel myself away from it, and read it rather quickly. I feel that this novel touched a part of me that had been locked away for years. Nothing has hit this close to home and described the relationship that i had with my father. I feel this could possibly be the best novel of this generation.

Nick Cave novels are rare birds: his last, to my knowledge, was a mud-soaked piece of Southern Gothic depravity from 1989 called And the Ass Saw the Angel, in itself a brilliant, unhinged piece of writing and in its way a perfect companion piece for Cave's music which at that time was exploiting Leadbelly's romantic outlaw legacy and turning out albums' worth of excellent murder ballads, mined from Mississippi earth, and burnishing the reputations of collaborators as unusual as Polly Harvey and Kylie Minogue in doing so.

If it seemed odd that an Australian should be one of the most dogged and purist perpetrators of the American romantic tradition, that was only until you saw Cave's screenplay, The Proposition, which renders his scorched-earth Australia like tones and makes a case for a rival tradition.

So The (lonesome?) Death of Bunny Munro, as a title and yea, even unto about half way down the first page, sounded like it would follow the same furrow: a doomed travelling salesman - so much Arthur Miller - in a washed-up hotel room, in Brighton, eviscerating his distant wife.

But did you see the dissonance there? *Brighton*?

I flipped ahead, before purchasing, just to check this was in fact Brighton, Arkansas, or some other such remote, exotic and God-forsaken place. But no, this is good old Brighton, UK, present day. And Bunny Munro is no Willie Loman. And this is, aside from its wilful and exuberant sordidity, a very different sort of Nick Cave novel from his last one.

As a rock musician, Nick Cave is smarter than your average bear (not hard, admittedly: the playful and extensive vocabulary of his lyrics has always attested to that) and here, Cave's linguistic invention is always on top form. This novel is over written with great zeal: deliberately and enjoyably - a talented writer consciously using a technique for a particular end, as opposed to the more common over-reach of an amateur.

Though its content ranges from icky to downright repulsive, Cave's delivery is witty enough to make it always entertaining and frequently funny. Former collaborator Minogue again makes an appearance, but this time we laugh (gently) at Kylie's expense (literally, she is the butt of the joke), and Cave apologises to her in his afterword, and to Avril Lavigne, who fares far worse at Cave's hands than the Where Are They Now file she's currently inhabiting would say she was entitled to.

So, unless you have a profound respect for Avril Lavigne, form excellent. Not so convinced about the substance, however.

For one thing, Bunny Munro has no plot to speak of: it is a simple downhill slide into oblivion. I fancy Cave might see it as a tragedy (I can't for the life of me work out what other motivation he'd have), but a tragedy requires a flawed hero who refuses a path to redemption at his own cost. There's no such dynamic here. Bunny Munro has no redeeming features; he's irredeemable and (so sayeth the first words of the book), doomed. There's no moral to be heeded here.

Nor are other available characters used to their potential. A murderous sex fiend, dressed as a devil, rampages down the country drawing ever nearer to Brighton, in a clear metaphorical parallel. But, just when it might get interesting (is this Bunny's doppelganger? Is this Bunny's fate? Will they confront each other?) the devil figure drops out of the story.

Bunny's son, Bunny junior, has an eye condition which Bunny wilfully ignores despite the boy's gentle reminders - I guess something statically figurative about that - but the condition gets no worse over the course of the novel. Bunny is dogged by constant interaction with a particular fleet of well-named lorries, but short of making the obvious point that Bunny is destined to be a "Dudman", it isn't clear what the point of these was either.

Basically, this isn't a story, as such. It's an expiration; a ghastly but meaningless descent into oblivion which happens to be queasily enjoyable.

There is some significance to be drawn from the fact that Irvine Welsh, whose novels tend to be of a piece (Filth particularly), was impressed. If that sort of thing floats your boat (it doesn't mine) you might be also. Otherwise, outside Cave's core fan base, Bunny Munro is likely to be of passing interest only.

Olly Buxton

I didn't do the usual research before buying this book, so it caught me off guard. I didn't expect it to be so sexual and so ...."man"ish. Made me wonder on more than one occasion what goes on Mr Cave's head??!?! More *prudish* readers could find it offensive as there is no shortage of descriptive phrases involving female private parts. But the on-road story of Bunny, a sex-addict door-to-door salesman, and his young son after the suicide of his wife kept me intrigued until the end. Bunny visually and progressively evolved before my eyes and I knew how it was going to end but wasn't sure how it was going to get there, which is cool thing. Not totally my thing but certainly an interesting ride...

Let me begin by saying I have been a Nick Cave fan for years and own all his Bad Seeds albums as well as side projects, singles, bootlegs, etc., and all his books. This should be fairly obvious from my other reviews. I thus hope fans will give my honest review a chance rather than dismissing it automatically because I fail to jump on the dubious bandwagon praising this to the proverbial skies.

Simply put, I can only think those calling this book great are letting their well-earned respect for Cave cloud their judgment. Great artists often reach a point where their work is automatically praised even when they seem to only get worse. Cave certainly has a great back catalog, but I fear this is beginning to happen. His recording output over the last decade was very spotty, yet nearly every release was widely hailed as great - even as a masterpiece. I figured the same would happen here and was sadly right; unfortunately, it just does not deserve it. While not absolutely horrible, The Death of Bunny Munro is, at best, slightly above average. It certainly would not be getting so much attention if written by an unknown - may indeed have failed to even be published.

This is truly a shame, because it starts well. One would be very hard-pressed to find a more engaging and memorable first sentence, especially in anything recent. However, it gets worse almost immediately. In an interview several years ago Cave said he cannot read books unless they are immediately interesting; it seems he tried hard to make his book avoid this fate and grossly overcorrected. Cave seems determined to throw every conventionally shocking thing out at once to ensure we do not lose attention. Sadly, though, this becomes at least as predictable and boring as anything once the initial effect wears off. Sex, including rape, appears either in action or thought about every page and a half, making much of the book at least soft-core pornography. On top of this, there is plenty of drugs, violence, and profanity amid it all. Even pedophilia is thrown in. On top of all this, Cave italicizes curse words just to make his point even more maddeningly clear. The constant sex may be titillating to some, but anyone who finds it so would be better off reading - or watching - actual porn. It is at any rate so over the top as to be unrealistic. It is very hard to believe that anyone is as sex-obsessed as the title protagonist - and, even if so, that it comes to them so easily. I do not mention this because I am an offended prude; I am a huge Cave fan after all and have read most of the famous "extreme" books throughout history. However, this is simply too much - not gratuitous in the Hollywood sense so much as lacking purpose. Is Cave trying to shock? Those who have no idea what they are in for may well be shocked, but anyone familiar with him will not be so much surprised as saddened. This is the most disappointing part; the book is almost self-parody - every Cave cliché multiplied to the nth power. Cave is well known for dealing heavily in dark subjects like death, sex, and violence with power, emotion, and humor. What makes him great is that, where so many lose the art in trying to shock, he manages to make it all work and often even be profound and moving as well as entertaining. Here, conversely, he is out of control: undisciplined, inartistic, and heavy-handed to the point of banality. One could almost think the book was written to mock his style, driving customary touches and themes to extremes in order to expose them as hollow. It is a sad, sad exercise that should disappoint any fan.

Worse yet, it would be superfluous even if the extreme elements were well-done, because there is virtually nothing else. The extremism soon becomes so predictable as to be flat-out boring, and we long for something to hold the book up - but it never really comes. The worst and most maddening aspect is pure repetition. The prose is a big part of it; images are repeated ad nauseum, and several short phrases are used almost continuously, even when the narrator is merely being descriptive. The ubiquitous "or something" is particularly annoying, and we can almost see Cave struggling to constantly come up with new ways to describe genitals. Still worse are obsessive mentions of flavor-of-the-month pop stars Cave should not even admit to knowing. This is all clearly intentional, but that does not make it artistic. From about twenty or so pages in to just before the end - i.e., about two hundred pages out of a book less than three hundred - is basically the same thing over and over again. A single sentence sums it up: "Bunny Munro goes door-to-door selling beauty products, having sex with most of his clients while bringing his boy along without really paying him any attention." I have read hundreds, maybe thousands of books, including several well over a thousand pages, but never another that goes so long without changing. There is really no plot to speak of, especially in the long middle section; the book cannot even be called episodic. It almost seems as if Cave is trying to torture; I certainly would have put it down long before finishing if it had been almost anyone else. Many will likely fail to get through it, and I cannot blame them.

Adding to the boringness is Cave's obsession with small, grimy details. These are presumably meant to lend an air of realism, but all they really do is make the book drag even more. This is truly unfortunate, because something is badly needed to break up the monotony. The only real effort Cave seems to make here is working in some symbolism, of which several critics have made much. However, I was thoroughly unimpressed. The symbols he uses - i.e., Bunny or Bunny's father as God, Bunny or Bunny Junior as Christ, Bunny's wife as Holy Ghost, etc. - are superficial and obvious. The "fake" devil symbolizing the "real" devil is this abyss' nadir. It occasionally seems as if Cave has something going with the Bunny-as-Christ bit, but the character's thoroughgoing immorality ruins it. One could have expected rather more from Cave here because of his lyrics' strong, well-done Biblical allusions, but this is really nothing more than amateurish.

Other than sheer boringness, the biggest problem may be the clichéd, sentimental, and fully predictable ending. I could see how it would end before I was even a quarter of the way through and am sure everyone else will also. My wife could see it just from skimming; she could not bring herself to actually read the book, which is very understandable. I had three or so alternate scenarios in mind, all hackneyed, and the only surprise is that Cave decided to use them all. He pulls a trick originated and perfected in Ambrose Bierce's classic short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and, while it has been done worse a few times, it has nearly always been done better. There is nothing to be let down from, but it is disappointing that the book fails to get significantly better. Those who, like me, are stubborn - and/or perverse - enough to force themselves through the book do so because they think it just has to get better. Finding out that it never does is truly devastating. The strange thing is that this is clearly deliberate. Everything about the book - title, first sentence, section title, etc. - points to the ending; one could easily think Cave was trying to disappoint. Defenders will of course claim this is foreshadowing, but it is very poorly done - not so much elementary as a failed shot at something complex. Romeo and Juliet is the prototypical example of a work that gives the ending at the very start and still manages to work, and several post-modern writers, notably Kurt Vonnegut, took up the tack. Cave tries but fails miserably. The ending cannot even be called an anti-climax; it is exactly what anyone would expect and no more - which is to say, very little.

Characterization is also very poor. There are no rounded characters; everyone but Bunny is presented one-dimensionally, and we never find out much about them - certainly not enough to care. Bunny is described quite minutely but is so shallow it fails to matter. This may be a major problem for many; there is really not a single likable character. Bunny Junior is sympathetic, but the focus is never on him for more than a paragraph or two, and it is hard to give him the attention Cave apparently wants from us. Bunny's wife could potentially be sympathetic but is a non-entity. The "devil" killer is by far the most interesting character but is barely used. I kept hoping he would figure prominently and was greatly disappointed when he did not; even a quick glance at other reviews shows I am not alone. The novel could perhaps have been substantially improved if he were more integral; perhaps the whole thing should have been based on him. He is the only thing that reminds me of what I like about Cave's songs, especially the humor. Lack of humor, by the way, is one of the book's most fatal flaws. In stark contrast to most of Cave's work, and certainly his best, there is precious little of it. We can clearly see him straining for it, but he falls so flat it is near-embarrassing.

Bunny himself is absolutely loathsome - one of the most despicable characters ever, so disgustingly execrable that even when his own wife hangs herself because of his infidelity all he can think is that her breasts look good. Essentially subjective things like infidelity and drug use aside, he is a rapist with pedophilic tendencies who neglects his wife and son. Oh, yes, and he is also a perpetual liar and swindler who steals from a helpless old lady whom he fools into liking him. He is fully selfish and vain, caring about nothing but feeding his own proverbial head, and seems devoid of empathy, conscience, or even basic kindness. There is plenty of room in literature for characters with flaws or even anti-heroes, but he is not held back by a tragic flaw or some other forgivable shortcoming; he is thoroughly unlikable. This may be especially troubling early on, when third-person narration makes it unclear if we are supposed to like or loathe him. It eventually becomes clear - probably after too long a time - that we are supposed to hate him, which makes the ending something of a problem. Just as anyone would have predicted, he is overcome with guilt just before dying, realizing all the bad he has done, especially how he has neglected his son, etc. He is symbolically forgiven and essentially redeemed - though of course too late to make any practical difference, not least because his nine-year-old son is without a guardian. As this goes on only in his head, it is hard to know how to take it. Does the narrator agree? Does Cave? Are we supposed to? Real or imagined, the forgiveness provokes some thought, forcing us to consider if it is justified. Only the most charitable and Christian in the strictest sense could possibly forgive such a person. Nearly everyone will think Bunny gets off far too easily, especially if we are actually supposed to accept the change at face value. It is not just that he is forgiven; he is not even punished. This of course fits in with Cave's life-long Christianity interest, but most readers will have great difficulty seeing it as anything but perfunctory - and with good reason.

Though sadly predictable, the ending is thus by far the best part of the book. It initially tempted me to give the book three stars and lead me to settle on two when it probably really deserves only one. However, my view sobered after the knee-jerk effect wore off, letting me see the book for what it is - a very bad novel that a semi-decent, if predictable, ending does not even come close to redeeming. Yet I cannot deny that the ending is written with significant emotion - indeed, had me near tears. Aside from provoking thought, it leads into some of the novel's more serious themes - the difficulty of parenting in today's world, the father/son relationship, the nature of evil and forgiveness, etc. Some have worried - or complained - that many will unfortunately miss such things because of all the shocking material, but there is really no one to blame but Cave. This is not a book with serious, meaningful material thinly veiled beneath a conventionally shocking surface; it is conventionally shocking to the core with a (very) small emphasis on serious themes. The latter are not buried; they are obliterated. What should be padding dominates so much that any so-called "seriousness" is superficial at best. A good novel - even a great one - could be made from these themes but not from this presentation. No rewrite would suffice; it is far beyond repair.

Is there anything even remotely good about the novel other than the tit-bits about the ending? Not much. Some of the prose has potential; though mostly asinine and boring, the descriptions are occasionally arresting, memorable, and well-phrased. This was the top strength of Cave's prior novel, 1989's And the Ass Saw the Angel, and seeing it decreased was unexpected. Cave also comes alive at times when depicting Bunny's increasingly downward spiral toward insanity and death, but it is more implied than fully fleshed out. He could certainly have done better; I kept expecting this to pick up - but, as with the rest, it never did. The only other remotely positive thing I can think of is that, for what it is worth, the novel is very different from And the Ass. Story, setting, dialogue, narration, etc. are completely different, though some themes are shared. The style is also markedly changed; most noticeably, descriptions are far more concise, though I have already noted this is mostly for the worse. Such change means little; hardly anyone's style fails to change significantly in twenty years. However, it at least shows Cave is capable of diversity, and honest appraisers looking for something good to say can point to little else.

The rave reviews this continues to get from fans and critics depress me, and the fact that Cave says director John Hillcoat, whom he has often worked with recently, gave the "original spark" means it may well be turned into a film. I still believe Cave has considerable - perhaps even great - talent buried somewhere, and I hold out hope that he could rekindle it if someone just told him how bad this and some of his other recent work is. The problem may well be that, at this point, he is surrounded by fawning sycophants who only tell him how great and brilliant he is, feeding his seemingly ever-inflating ego and perpetuating ever-worsening work. A single honest comment might be all that is needed, but it seems this will never come. I still believe he has a good novel in him somewhere but am growing ever more doubtful. Let us sincerely hope this is not The Death of Nick Cave's Talent...