You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
marlamoreau 's review for:
Bunny
by Mona Awad
I'm going to say 3.5/5, but I'm really uncertain how to rate this one. I found the writing style of the first 10% lulling (like a sleep aid) and rather boring and repetitious, much like I found the first like, 40% of Rouge (I really did not enjoy Rouge except for the last 20%, I only gave Awad another chance for a Goodreads challenge). Then it started to pick up and I couldn't put it down. Disturbing, hallucinatory, layered, and strange - just the kind of thing I love in fiction.
I was reading carefully so as not to miss anything, and thought I had a decent handle on the plot. But then the last 15% or so muddied not just my interpretation of the reading thus far, but all possible conclusive interpretations.
Sometimes this kind of thing is good, intentional, and deepens the meaning of a book. Here, I consider it a failure - the author was going for something definitive, but didn't get there (or sort of got there in an unnecessarily convoluted way). And confusion from the reader is interpreted by the reader as profundity as they search for "evidence" to support what they want to see.
So, I'm not certain what to rate this. I did enjoy the read, but it had no meaning besides being a pretentious metaphor for the artistic process and an ironic critique of the pretentious upper eschalon/ivy league of the art world where crazy is just another "process" and having too much imagination makes you lonely as the misunderstood outsider. Yawn.
So, I guess 3.5/5.
Judging by reviews and Reddit, there are 3 main ways people interpret this book, none of which completely fit.
MAJOR Spoilers ahead.
1. Take everything literally. Samantha creates Ava from a swan after drunkenly trauma dumping to a professor. The Bunnies recognize Ava as a Darling, a more sophisticated one than what they have been able to create (because Samantha is more creative than they are), so they woo Samantha and get her to join their group so their Drafts can be better. They realize Sam doesn't know that Ava isn't real, drug her to keep her calm, and dump her after the failed workshop. But Sam inadvertently creates Max out of the stag. The Bunnies kill Ava, Max manipulates the Bunnies, everything happens as written. Sam decides to give the real world with real people a go at the end.
2. Sam is mentally ill and an unreliable narrator. There are a bunch of versions of this - she's really in a mental institution and nobody is real or everything is through a twisted lens, she has a psychotic break after trauma dumping - creating Ava and moving into an abandoned house - and tries to self medicated with drugs, imagining the interaction with the bunnies, the final interaction with Jonah something like accepting help, etc. etc.
3. Convoluted metaphor for the creative process. The Bunnies are jealous of her because her work is "real" and try to copy her because her "Drafts" are much better than theirs. She's of a lower economic status and has had a hard life and is lonely. The school is a nice bubble while the city is poverty stricken and dangerous, Sam is struggling but everyone takes it as her going through a process, which is confirmed as she ultimately prevails while the Bunnies suffer for trying to copy her.
In my thoughts, it is most likely some combination of 2 and 3, but the point is that it's a mishmash of ideas. It loses direction and that makes the work muddied and ineffective regardless of whatever the author intended.
I actually am going to read the sequel to this simply to see if Awad clarifies a direction (I'm curious), but otherwise, after giving her work 2 shots, I'm done.
I was reading carefully so as not to miss anything, and thought I had a decent handle on the plot. But then the last 15% or so muddied not just my interpretation of the reading thus far, but all possible conclusive interpretations.
Sometimes this kind of thing is good, intentional, and deepens the meaning of a book. Here, I consider it a failure - the author was going for something definitive, but didn't get there (or sort of got there in an unnecessarily convoluted way). And confusion from the reader is interpreted by the reader as profundity as they search for "evidence" to support what they want to see.
So, I'm not certain what to rate this. I did enjoy the read, but it had no meaning besides being a pretentious metaphor for the artistic process and an ironic critique of the pretentious upper eschalon/ivy league of the art world where crazy is just another "process" and having too much imagination makes you lonely as the misunderstood outsider. Yawn.
So, I guess 3.5/5.
Judging by reviews and Reddit, there are 3 main ways people interpret this book, none of which completely fit.
MAJOR Spoilers ahead.
1. Take everything literally. Samantha creates Ava from a swan after drunkenly trauma dumping to a professor. The Bunnies recognize Ava as a Darling, a more sophisticated one than what they have been able to create (because Samantha is more creative than they are), so they woo Samantha and get her to join their group so their Drafts can be better. They realize Sam doesn't know that Ava isn't real, drug her to keep her calm, and dump her after the failed workshop. But Sam inadvertently creates Max out of the stag. The Bunnies kill Ava, Max manipulates the Bunnies, everything happens as written. Sam decides to give the real world with real people a go at the end.
2. Sam is mentally ill and an unreliable narrator. There are a bunch of versions of this - she's really in a mental institution and nobody is real or everything is through a twisted lens, she has a psychotic break after trauma dumping - creating Ava and moving into an abandoned house - and tries to self medicated with drugs, imagining the interaction with the bunnies, the final interaction with Jonah something like accepting help, etc. etc.
3. Convoluted metaphor for the creative process. The Bunnies are jealous of her because her work is "real" and try to copy her because her "Drafts" are much better than theirs. She's of a lower economic status and has had a hard life and is lonely. The school is a nice bubble while the city is poverty stricken and dangerous, Sam is struggling but everyone takes it as her going through a process, which is confirmed as she ultimately prevails while the Bunnies suffer for trying to copy her.
In my thoughts, it is most likely some combination of 2 and 3, but the point is that it's a mishmash of ideas. It loses direction and that makes the work muddied and ineffective regardless of whatever the author intended.
I actually am going to read the sequel to this simply to see if Awad clarifies a direction (I'm curious), but otherwise, after giving her work 2 shots, I'm done.