Set at Warren, an Ivy League university in a bleak New England town, Bunny is told from the sardonic perspective of Samantha Heather Mackey—Smackie for short.
Smackie is a lonely scholarship student whose only friend is Ava, a nihilistic and captivating art school drop out. But everything changes when Samantha receives a glitter-covered invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon" and finds herself ditching Ava to attend. Despite her hostility towards the privileged, and to the overly affected, precious girls in her highly selective MFA program, Samantha is drawn into the world of the Bunnies—a clique of rich girls that function as one lip-glossed entangled hug.
Samantha participates in their ritualized off-campus "workshop" where they magically conjure boys from rabbits. The boys, aka the Drafts (or the Darlings), are as beautiful as soap opera actors, but invariably flawed. The worst Drafts, who manifest as vapid-and menacing-babblers, are literally axed by their ruthless creators.
Torn between Ava's protective anarchy and the toxic matter-of-fact magic of the Bunnies, Samantha conjures something unimaginable, something that will bring these opposing worlds into a wild and deadly collision.
Awad is an incredible writer and without a doubt, she crafts a gripping tale that seizes you, albeit almost to the point of claustrophobia. Bunny is an original take on girl cliques and also of the classic outsider-desperate-to-fit-in story. It is hypnotic and mesmerizing, yet sinister and dark.
This book wasn't quite for me and I can't figure out exactly why and what didn't work—I took a few days before writing this review and I am still stumped. As much as Awad's writing is clever, unique, and fresh, it is so manic that it is exhausting. I also don't think I fully understood what I was reading in that this book was completely bonkers at times, sometimes in a good way, and sometimes...not so much.
That being said, I read an interview that Awad did for the CBC about her debut 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl and I'm intrigued. I mean, how could I not pick it up after learning that Depeche Mode was on her writing playlist. For those that follow me on social media/read my blog know that basically Depeche Mode is my religion and the soundtrack to my life, so yah...I'll definitely be reading it.
MONA AWAD is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. Her debut book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl—a novel about a woman's lifelong struggle with body image issues—won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2016.
Awad now lives in the US.
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