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A review by mtstellens
Bunny by Mona Awad
3.0
What a weird one. I don’t really know how to describe this book. Cult that turns bunnies into men? It feels like this book is at times hiding its muddled or half built themes and meanings behind a weird and convoluted plot. The hilarious critiques of Samantha’s MFA program were very well done (poems carved into glass with diamond rings, slam poetry while shaving cinnamon bark). I think that the first two parts of the book shine a lot and then I lose the plot (and everything else) at the end. The first part did such a good job at raising the tension and giving us descriptions of all of our characters. Samantha, the desperately lonely protagonist, and each of the bunnies with their uniquely sickly sweet personalities. The actual very bloody and weird scenes with the transformations (beware the rabbits and some heads explode) and the prom totally drew me in.
I liked that in the first part that there were moments of Samantha questioning as to whether they were actually being mean to her or (Liz Lemon style) they were being nice and she was just being mean to them because of her (misogynistic?) perceptions of them. This kinda fell apart in the last part of the book where it seems that, yeah, they turned out to actually be vapid and mean rich girls. The second part of the book where the first person singular switches to be exclusively ‘us’ and ‘we’ and a sort of hive mind with no names just ’Bunny Bunny Bunny’. The gradual switching back to singular after Ava finds Samantha is also very good.
The last part gets much weirder and seems more like a list of things that happen rather than an actual plot, it was jam packed and I think that it's to the book’s detriment. This is the part that is supposed to be full of catharsis (The Lion story is completed, nothing really has happened, Ava/swan is murdered, Max/stag tramples the bunnies after briefly destroying their relationships with each other) but it just falls flat because it is too stuffed. The meaning also gets lost in my opinion. I did like the very abrupt graduation epilogue. Yeah, Samantha could have had normal friendships the whole time. I also just loved every scene that Jonah was in, great guy and definitely helped even out the book for me. Also agree with the assessment that this would be a cool move but works less as a book.
I liked that in the first part that there were moments of Samantha questioning as to whether they were actually being mean to her or (Liz Lemon style) they were being nice and she was just being mean to them because of her (misogynistic?) perceptions of them. This kinda fell apart in the last part of the book where it seems that, yeah, they turned out to actually be vapid and mean rich girls. The second part of the book where the first person singular switches to be exclusively ‘us’ and ‘we’ and a sort of hive mind with no names just ’Bunny Bunny Bunny’. The gradual switching back to singular after Ava finds Samantha is also very good.
The last part gets much weirder and seems more like a list of things that happen rather than an actual plot, it was jam packed and I think that it's to the book’s detriment. This is the part that is supposed to be full of catharsis (The Lion story is completed, nothing really has happened, Ava/swan is murdered, Max/stag tramples the bunnies after briefly destroying their relationships with each other) but it just falls flat because it is too stuffed. The meaning also gets lost in my opinion. I did like the very abrupt graduation epilogue. Yeah, Samantha could have had normal friendships the whole time. I also just loved every scene that Jonah was in, great guy and definitely helped even out the book for me. Also agree with the assessment that this would be a cool move but works less as a book.