Bunny (novel)

Bunny is a novel by Mona Awad, published in the United States in 2019 by Viking Press. It is the author's second novel, published three years after her first book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl. The film rights were optioned by Bad Robot Productions

Background
The protagonist of the story is Samantha Mackey, a Master of Fine Arts and Creative Writing student. Samantha arrives at the small, New England, liberal arts, Warren University on a scholarship.

The University
Samantha notes that the idyllic university grounds contrast sharply with the poverty of the surrounding community. Not only do the university grounds feature a lake with a swan, but the grounds are overrun by mostly black bunny rabbits. The name of the university, Warren and the title of the book, Bunny is, undoubtedly, part of intentional humorous word-play running through the book. Samantha perceives other students, who are typically from rich families, as phonies and prefers the company of her own imagination to associating with her peers. Samantha’s college career goes off the rails in her freshman year when, desperate for affirmation, she has an affair with her thesis advisor. She is left used and confused when he unaccountably terminates the relationship. Worse, she develops writer’s block.

Ava
Samantha is sitting alone on a bench by the lake one morning watching the lone swan, when suddenly a punk girl, Ava appears on the bench with a cigarette dangling from her lip. Her face is covered with a black veil she calls her “bitch curtain”. Ava, like Samantha despises Warren University and the two become fast friends. They find the platitudes dispensed at periodic workshops and student reviews by bored staff galling and Ava just wants to “burn the place down.”

The Bunnies
A particular object of their derision are the four other students in Samantha’s Creative Writing class. All are girls from rich families and call each other “bunny”. They are constantly hugging and finishing each other’s sentences. They dress in nauseatingly cute dresses featuring kittens, rainbows and unicorns and eat at a restaurant featuring tiny food, such as, mini hamburgers. These girls seem to move like one living thing and Ava coins the derogatory term “the bonobos” to refer to them.

Smut Salon
However, seismic changes are in store when Samantha receives an invitation to ‘Smut Salon’ a gathering which may be part workshop and part performance art, at the home of one of the bunnies. Although Samantha despises the girls, she can't resist the invitation. The workshop involves drugs and apparently the ritual sacrifice of a black bunny rabbit. Samantha is plied with specialty cocktails, possibly infused with bunny blood. By this time Samantha is under the influence and is not sure if she witnessed or hallucinated sex acts and murder involving a late arrival, a boy wearing one leather glove. She falls under the influence of the bunnies, who braid her hair in an elaborate coiffure of painful knots and assure her that this is all part of ‘The (Creative) Process'. Her relationship with her one true friend, Ava, is a predictable casualty.

Critical impact
Bunny was named the Best Book of 2019 by TIME, Vogue, Electric Literature, and The New York Public Library. The Washington Post refers to the author in glowing terms, stating, “Awad is a stone-cold genius line by line”, with the caveat that book relies on multiple genres, “Fairy tale. Horror. Satire. Metafiction. Each cleverly layered into Bunny, with cheeky references to Carrie, Heathers, Greek myths and Disney princess flicks. It can be a bit much.”

The Los Angeles Times review dwells on the scenes where The Bunnies try to secure Samantha’s collaboration on a project which they describe as “experimental”, “performance based”, “intertextual” and finally settle on “a hybrid”, which Samantha thinks is “What you call something when you just don’t know what you’re doing anymore.” The reviewer continues, “The scenes in which Samantha and her classmates discuss their respective projects will be darkly familiar to anyone who’s had to endure a creative writing workshop filled with gleefully pretentious would-be auteurs.”

Margaret Atwood, author of the classic dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale has named Mona Awad, the author of Bunny her literary heir apparent and has been an admirer of the novel for some time. Atwood called Bunny a form of gothic satire, which is simultaneously funny and horrifying.