Bunny | By Mona Awad

 

 

Synopsis :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel about a lonely graduate student drawn into a clique of rich girls.

‘We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn’t we?’

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England’s Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort – a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other ‘Bunny’, and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled ‘Smut Salon’, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door – ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the sinister yet saccharine world of the Bunnies, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision.

A spellbinding, down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, creativity and agency, and friendship and desire, Bunny is the dazzlingly original second book from the author of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My thoughts

 

 

 

 

 

Narrative and Plot

 

 

 

 

 

The first-person narrative is one of the highlights of Bunny. It is quite tough to catch a reader’s attention when things are as vague as in this story. But it grabs your attention right from the start. You keep turning the pages right from the start as you need to find out what is going on.

The plot starts out strong and the setups are all extraordinary. The pacing goes up and down at times but somehow it is relevant to the plot. The book stops and takes its time to make certain points. Suddenly, months have passed and you are moving on to the next stage.
However, the payoffs landed a bit short for me. Especially for a book that is so hyped as this one, I ended up expecting more. It is basically a mean girls clique, but much meaner. You have the protagonist enter the lair and find herself getting swept up in the flow of things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Characters and Conflicts

 

 

 

Most of the characters in the book are unlikeable. That makes it easier to root for Samantha, the protagonist. She is the outsider and one wants her to overcome this enormous challenge ahead of her. Surviving the semester, without getting absorbed into the mean girls clique.

What happens once she gets in with the Bunnies is the core of the story. It shines a light on the snobbery of the artistic world or the world in general. Those with power and wealth can create a narrative of their own and get away with it. While doing so, the book itself becomes what it is making a mockery of. I do not know if that was intentional. If so, then brilliant. If not, then it is quite a great effort at satire but missed the landing by a few marks.

For me, we only get Samantha’s point of view. And there are so many unexplained things in the end. It might be left for the readers interpretation but I am the kind of reader who wants to know the author’s interpretation of things. I have invested the hours reading the book, so I should be rewarded with the reason and logic of most incidents.

While the big reveal was something I never saw coming, it raises a lot of questions. None of them were answered and being denied that reward left me wanting for more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, this book was indeed a fun experience, but it was a one-time read for me. I wish it had better character arcs. Even the modern interpretations of mean girls know better than to stereotype the clique. This book does exactly that and is highly unapologetic about it. Honestly, that makes me unsure how to feel about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author