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!!
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Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2014
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Top reviews from other countries
Alan Williams-Key
I found the main character was missing. He didn't ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 24, 2015Verified Purchase
tiza
Unbelievable!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 14, 2019Verified Purchase
YeahYeahNoh
Harrowing story of broken relationships and moral decline
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 16, 2014Verified Purchase
Miss D Shaw
Gripping!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2018Verified Purchase
Voodoomark
Nick Cave aside, this is a good book. If you love Nick Cave, this is a great book.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 15, 2020Verified Purchase
