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    The Death of Bunny Munro: A Novel
    The Death of Bunny Munro: A Novel
    The Death of Bunny Munro: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Death of Bunny Munro: A Novel

    Written by Nick Cave

    Narrated by Nick Cave

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Twenty years after the publication of his first novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, Nick Cave brings us the final days of Bunny Munro, a salesman in search of a soul.

    Set adrift by his wife's suicide and struggling to keep some sort of grasp on reality, Bunny Munro drives off in his yellow Fiat Punto, Bunny Jr. in tow. To his son, waiting patiently in the car while he peddles beauty wares and quickies to lonely housewives in the south of England, Bunny is a hero, larger than life. But Bunny himself seems to have only a dim awareness of his son's existence, viewing his needs as a distraction from the relentless pursuit of sex, alcohol, and drugs.

    When his bizarre road trip shades into a final reckoning, Bunny realizes that the revenants of his world—decrepit fathers, vengeful ghosts, jealous husbands, and horned psycho-killers—lurk in the shadows, waiting to exact their toll.

    At turns dark and humane—and with all the mystery and enigma fans will recognize as Cave's singular vision—The Death of Bunny Munro questions the nature of sin and redemption, and lays bare the imprints that fathers leave on their sons.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateSep 1, 2009
    ISBN9781427208040
    Author

    Nick Cave

    Nick Cave has been performing music for more than forty years and is best known as the songwriter and lead singer of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, whose 2019 album, Ghosteen, was widely received as their best work ever. Cave’s body of work also covers a wider range of media and modes of expression, including film score composition, ceramic sculpture and writing novels. Over the last few years his Red Hand Files website and “Conversation with” live events have seen Cave exploring deeper and more direct relationships with his fans.

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    Reviews for The Death of Bunny Munro

    3.5/5

    364 ratings37 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is so dark and bright. Thanks, Nick. Great novel
    • 5/5
      Lovely to hear Nicks Voice . The imagination is safe to travel when he guides it
    • 3/5
      The ending of this novel is already given away by its title The Death of Bunny Munro, so reading this book is about finding out who this Bunny Munro is and how his death comes about. Bunny Munro, the protagonist of the novel, is a highly unlikeable character. In the beginning of the novel the reader learns that Bunny Munro is a door to door beauty product salesman and is currently spending the night in a hotel in the course of a sales trip. After he had sex with a prostitute he is on the phone with his wife while getting more drunk and smoking one cigarette after another. Their conversation shows that the two of them are not separated but pretty much live separate lives. Bunny's wife, Libby, knows about Bunny's affairs with different women and what he does when he is away on business trips. The next day, after having sex with a waitress at the hotel, Bunny returns home to his wife and his son, Bunny Jr. He finds the bedroom door locked with his wife in the room. When he manages to get inside he sees that his wife has committed suicide and the reader learns that Libby has had a 'medical condition' and was depressed. Bunny cannot really cope with the situation and starts drinking and smoking day and night. Most of the time, his thoughts revolve around vaginas - especially that of Avril Lavigne, for whatever reason that might be - and Bunny jerks off a lot. All this time, Bunny Jr. has to witness his father's behavior firsthand and is left alone in dealing with his mother's death. After the funeral, Bunny takes his son on a sales trip with him. All along the trip, Bunny is drinking heavily and trying to have sex with his female customers while Bunny Jr. is waiting in the car. Reality and imagination are oftentimes a blur for Bunny as well as his son, as they see Libby very often. While Bunny feels haunted by the frequent apparitions of his dead wife, his son finds some comfort in seeing his mother again. In the end, Bunny dies, as is already announced in the title.I found The Death of Bunny Munro to be a highly disturbing novel with a very unpleasant protagonist. There is so much at fault with this character that I cannot even begin to describe the things I do not like about him. The story that leads the reader to the eventual death of Bunny is to my mind not very thrilling and highly repetitive. For example, sexual references are abundant and Bunny's glorification of female body parts seems to be one of the most important elements in the story as it is repeated so often. Then, there is the lighting of cigarettes. After reading the novel, I had the feeling that a cigarette was lit on every single page of the book. Some things did just not add up for me, so the reading experience became quite tedious. While the beginning seemed to provide a promising setting, the remainder of the book disappointed me a lot. On the whole, not more than 2.5 stars.
    • 4/5
      This book was difficult to read, but evoked a lot of feeling.
    • 3/5
      Deeply disturbing book, deeply unpleasant character, but surprisingly readable.

      Bunny Munro is a door to door saleman dealing in cosmetics. He is an abuser: drink, women, drugs - generally everything I hate a person to be. He seems to be constantly fixated on his next sexual encounter and cares for no-one and nothing else. Early in the book, his wife commits suicide and he has sole responsibility for his 9 year old son. This changes nothing, he takes his son on the road and leaves him in the car whilst he 'sells' - more often whilst he makes his next conquest. Even at his wife's funeral he finds a toilet so that he can self-gratify. All the way through the book I just wanted him to take note of his son and at least buy him some eye-drops!

      There are so many examples of things that were unpleasant and disturbing but I don't want to dwell on them or enumerate them all plus there would be no point in anyone else reading the book if I detailed it all here.

      Another thing that grated for me, was that although set in Brighton (UK) its language is all wrong. It struck me as American, but I guess as Nick Cave is an Australian, it must be similar there. One example: his wife was taken away on a gurney - we would say stretcher, but there were many, many more examples where Americanisms are used rather than the British way of speaking.

      Ok, on the plus side, I found it surprisingly readable, took me a couple of days. I can't say I'm a big fan of Nick Cave but it was definitely worth reading one of his books, just for the experience. So, done that, don't ever need to read anything of his ever again!

      (Just read through the comments of previous reviewers and find that we're mostly in agreement. What I am now wondering is: were the previous readers all female? I wonder whether a male reader would be more sympathetic to the character or not? Would they have a different perspective on it all? I hope not entirely!)
    • 4/5
      When I first started reading this, I was certain I was going to give it a single star, since that is the lowest rating Goodreads offers. There is just way too much vulgarity and sex-both real and imagined. I know that this helps us get to really understand the main character, Bunny, but sometimes there can be a bit too much.

      I decided on four stars though because there really is a great story here. My only problem with the actual story was the somewhat abrupt ending. Yes, the title of the book is "The Death of Bunny Munro", and the book ends with the death of Bunny Munro. But I really want to know what is going to happen to Bunny Jr. The main reason I continued reading the book was because of Jr, and to not really have a clear idea of what is going to happen to him is annoying!!!
    • 4/5
      The novel deals with the life of a door-to-door salesman, Bunny Munro, who is sexually obsessed and booze abusive. After the suicide of his wife, he goes on and gets trapped in his own vicious circle of sex and alcohol, along with his little son.The portrait of Bunny Munro is the one of an anti-hero doomed to self-destruction. It is a very complicated and unlovable character that, literally (pardon my french), doesn't give a shit about anything or anyone. He dreams of shagging every woman he comes across and regards himself as an attractive one with a special virtue for women. It is outrageous, and sad, to see how he can only think of sex in the most extreme of the situations. This is one of the main points of the book.As you keep reading, you can grasp some hints about the whens and whys of Bunny's vices. His relationship with his father is cruelly explanatory, and tells a lot about the kind of childhood and complexes Bunny must have had. For his part, Bunny Junior is an adorable character, living a weird life which is not meant for a child. The contrast between father and son is always there, and creates some nice literary moments.The storyline can be a little repetitive, but it adds up to the monotonous and vicious ways of the main character. I think the pace of the story is the right one, as it depicts pretty good the state of mind of its characters.I think that Nick Cave wanted to spark off readers with the harshness of his story, and he succeeds (just read some of the comments regarding women treatment in the novel). I find it is necessary to have some books like this one: this is the kind of stuff that is not right, and the author is punishing the anti-social behaviours of Bunny. No one should be offended (Cave also apologizes in an afterword).Good novel. I like its touch of unpopularity. It might turn out to be a very good indie film.
    • 3/5
      This started out okay, and it's firmly in the same neighbourhood as Chuck Palahniuk and Warren Ellis (though he's pretty much right next door to Chuck). The same nasty underbelly of society characters.

      While I enjoyed it for a while, and I completely understood that Bunny was a sex addict, it got to the point where I began to think, ho hum, here's another girl. He's going to size her up and down, decide she'd do him, he'll imagine her vagina, throw a Kylie Minogue or Avril Lavigne reference in there, then grab his crotch.

      I mean, it is what it is. But there was a point where I think even Cave didn't know where to take it.

      It's okay, but there's better out there.
    • 3/5
      Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave I like Nick Cave's music so I naturally came to this with some pre-conceptions.

      I liked it but not as much as I wanted to.The thing I liked was how seedy it all was, like everything is seedy, the main character is seedy, the locations are seedy, the action is seedy. I guess it's that English thing about squalor. I lived in Amsterdam for a few years and people occupied empty houses (squats or kraakhuis). The Dutch occupied beautiful empty apartments overlooking the canals while the English occupied boarded up slums with no water or toilets or power.Bunny Munro would have been one of those kids when he was younger. Devoid of conscience and taste yet feral and active. There is not one single redeeming feature about Bunny Munro, no shred of humanity at all and the inevitability of it is like watching something die a horrible death.At the end of it I felt a bit like I'd swallowed something bad like processed English food. I know he is from Oz but has that thing down just so.Not for the faint hearted among us.
    • 3/5
      The excessive perversion of the main character Bunny Munro is at times tiring and mostly unsettling. If not for the story of Bunny's son, Bunny Munro Jr., to counterbalance the storyline of the father, this book would have been lost in its pessimism. No doubt Nick Cave did not set out to create a likable protagonist; the reader has to take Bunny for who he is. I loved the side story of the devil man terrorizing England; it was the perfect pairing to this tale of self destruction and possible redemption.
    • 4/5
      Bunny Munro is a bastard, a tragic figure, a modern age Lothario with sexual addiction tendencies accentuated by his predisposition for dreaming and daydreaming about the private parts of Avril Lavigne and Kylie Minogue, a man with a gift of the gab which incidentally makes him a successful beauty product salesman, and of course gets him in trouble along the way especially with the staff of the many fast food restaurants he visits.

      I enjoyed the fact that a bunch of what goes on in the novel we read through the eyes of his nine year old son Bunny Junior who loves his encyclopedia as much as he loves his dad. When a writer goes on and on describing every little minutia of the scene, I tend to skip it, as I like to use my imagination to fill in the gaps, plus I find that shit boring as balls, not saying that Mr. Cave did that here a lot but in the instances in which he did the writing was so good that I didn't mind it that much. The novel is a breezy read a fact which I found a bit surprising since the adventure takes place in England and I thought he was going to use a lot of regional dialect.

      Kafka meets Benny Hill, go read it.


    • 2/5
      I've had this book for a while. I love Nick Cave's music but what prompted me to pick it up was a wonderful interview he gave on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He came across as very smart, unpretentious, self-aware, and interesting. I couldn't wait to start the book. I'm only on page 57 but so far it's nothing like I expected and I'm not enjoying it. I will persevere because I can't believe Nick Cave is capable of anything as crass as the start of this book.
      Okay, by page 70 I am into the book and curious to see where it will lead.
      One of the reviews quoted on the back of the book describes it as "black humour." I guess it was just too black for me. Occasionally I did laugh out loud, but overall I found this a depressing read. I guess I stick to Nick Cave the musician.
    • 4/5
      This, the second book that the singer Nick Cave has written, is a black comedic tragic tale about Bunny Munro and the increasing velocity of his downward spiral after his wife's suicide. Bunny is an unlikeable character - incapable of dealing with love, he's a modern day sex addict with an insatiable libido who uses his job as a beauty product door-to-door salesman as a fast-track route to his next shag. After his wife's death (no spoiler - we learn of that on the book jacket), he takes his son Bunny Junior on the road with him, and we observe the slow car crash of Bunny's life, as he struggles to deal with his own emotions and those of his grieving child. Having always considered himself invincible with the ladies, as his aimlessness and erratic behaviour increases he becomes stripped back to face the weak, pathetic and insignificant character he really is until there's nothing left to hide behind.For the first few chapters I wasn't sure I would enjoy this book - it was very laddish, and I wasn't sure there was going to be much depth to it. But surprisingly, once I was a quarter of the way in I couldn't put it down. Cave does a great job of slowly destroying Bunny and exposing him as a man of immense weakness and zero achievement, portraying him in a comedic yet poignantly sad light.I felt that Cave was heavily influenced by Updike's Rabbit novels, even to the point of similarity between the characters' names. Cave doesn't get anywhere near Updike's touching characterisation - I didn't like Bunny at all whereas I grew to love and pity Rabbit in equal measure - yet this a decent enough book. There were some writing tools employed (such as a maroon colour symbolism) which were perhaps a little too obvious, but all in all this was a good read. Whilst it was hard to sympathise with Bunny due to his immense self-centredness, as a reader I felt immense sympathy and sorrow for his neglected young son. 3.5 stars - I dropped half a star as it's hard to fall in love with a book where you don't feel anything for the character, but a job well done in this singer to novelist transition.
    • 4/5
      Bunny Munro, un vendedor a domicilio de loción, pasa los días ocupándose de las necesidades hidratantes y sexuales de las amas de casa de la costa meridional inglesa. Viéndose a la deriva tras el suicidio de su mujer, sin embargo, Bunny se lía la manta a la cabeza y sale por última vez a la carretera con su hijo de nueve años a cuestas. Mientras el adulto farolea de puerta en puerta despachando su mercancía y tratando de complacer su inagotable apetito, el niño aguarda en el coche conversando con el espectro de su madre y contemplando la progresiva autodemolición de su padre. Acosado por maridos celosos, por su apremiante lascivia, por los reproches de la fallecida esposa y un asesino en serie disfrazado de Satanás, Bunny Munro es un hombre hundido. Lo peor es que va a morir—y Bunny lo presiente.
    • 4/5
      At first this book oozed with teenage boy shock and humor but halfway through I started realizing that it was essential for the development of the main character. I breezed through this book with an easy flow that surprised me. The development of the plot was slow but I didn't mind and the easy flow kept me reading. I ended up really enjoying everything about this book by the end and it had me thinking why more books can't be as original. The story itself might not be original but the feeling and characters are. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to read something different and can overcome the vulgar bits to get to the meat of what the Author was trying to do. I believe it to be a success.
    • 5/5
      The moment I finished reading this book, I decided it was my absolute favourite. Not only is he a great musician, but Nick Cave writes brilliantly and is quite hilarious. The nature of the story is conceivably dark, but that's to be expected from a man who's penned albums with titles like "Your Funeral, My Trial" and "Murder Ballads". I love this book to death.Alyssa Pellichero
    • 2/5
      I wanted to like this, and as someone who is very keen on Nick Cave, and who lives in the city of Brighton & Hove (where the story is set), was confident that this would tick all my boxes. When the book was first published I went to an entertaining launch event where Nick Cave was interviewed by author Will Self. I am not sure why I left it until 2013 to read this book. Perhaps I sensed it was not up to Nick Cave's usual standard.The story is summarised by the book's title. It's is about the death of Bunny Munro. Bunny Munro is a travelling door-to-door salesman who sells women's beauty products. His serial infidelities, and other character shortcomings, drive his wife to suicide. The majority of the book describes a road trip (if a few nights in hotels and a few sales calls to customers in and around Brighton and Hove can be called a road trip) with his nine year old son.The Father-Son road trip echoes "The Road", however in this story the father barely registers his son's needs and feelings, and registers only the vaguest sense of love or responsibility. Bunny Munro is a monstrous character: vain, sex obsessed, egotistical, and deluded. Having created this monster, Nick Cave seems unsure what to do with him and the novel is essentially a sequence of meaningless attempted sexual encounters. There is no character development. Bunny's limited self-insight gives the character nowhere to go and his devoted son can barely work out what is going on. It all feels like a short story expanded into an overlong novel. Even the black humour generally falls wide of the mark. I enjoyed Nick Cave's writing style and the local setting, but beyond that was deeply disappointed by the flimsy story and Bunny's unremitting unpleasantness.So, whilst this book is a major disappointment, at least we still have a wealth of great music; the memories of many live shows; marvellous film scores; and some brilliant film scripts.
    • 4/5
      "He gives vent to his imagination and realises for the millionth time he has none and so he pictures her vagina."

      Nick Cave was already one of my favorite musicians, and now he’s one of my favorite novelists. This story had me shedding a tear over a(n eventually) penitent -- if overwhelmed -- debauchee of monstrously comic proportions who is hounded by the spirit of his dead-by-suicide wife and only mildly distracted by the presence of his beautiful, god-like, 9 year-old son while on an odyssey for the idealized female orifice. And the poor fellow doesn't even have the slightest clue as to why.

      A blurb by Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) claims that this story is a fusion of Cormac McCarthy, Franz Kafka and Benny Hill. I see it more as Henry Miller does Austin Powers with a dash of Ryan/Tatum O’Neal "Paper Moon." If there's redemption for Bunny Munro, through his child, there's redemption possible for the rest of us. And if there's redemption for the rest of us, who knows? Things may fall apart, but we at least can huddle in the consolation of the next generation, who, despite our best efforts to screw ‘em up, somehow find a way.
    • 5/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this book because the author writes with such a strong love of language(verbs in particular). The prose style is thrilling, inventive, risky, and just plain clever. This is my kind of book.

      Cave's plotting and pacing is also noteworthy. The protagonist starts out with a level of charm in his complete un-self-awareness. However, in the second half of the book, we begin to see the chinks in his armor; in other words, how he really *is* in the world, versus how he perceives himself in the world.

      Did this book win any awards? If not, WHY NOT?
    • 3/5
      This book should really garner more like a 3 1/2 but that is impossible with Goodreads rating system and I don't feel it deserves 4/5 stars. I'd recommend it to Nick Cave fans but that's probably as far as the recommendation would extend. It's a far cry from what he achieved in his novel And the Ass Saw the Angel, for instance. Still, it's not completely devoid of positives and it's definitely easier to read in terms of its language than the predecessor.

      What Nick Cave does well is bring us a character who is truly simultaneously depraved and happy go lucky, therefore, slightly likable despite his immorality. Bunny Munro is a sex fiend to the point of roofies and date rapes even as a married man with a son. But, as a traveling salesman he seems to get all of the action he could want, telling girls his name is "Bunny" with a wiggling of his hands behind his ears. Most of the girls seem to fall for it in this twisted Kylie Minogue fueled grand hallucination. Well, clearly parts of the novel are ripe with hallucinations and delusions and, if we really did care about Bunny we'd probably be more motivated to sort out reality.

      There's a hint of a James Joyce mentality of son becomes father cyclic nature of families but only a hint. It's more about this psychotic over the top escapade where a man has to come to terms with the nature of himself, someone he truly can't escape...and the reader must ask her/himself..."Does Bunny Munro even see his actions as wrong?" That's where Cave errs...in trying to create a complex character, we don't actually see one that can be redeemed even though I think we're supposed to want him to be redeemed.

      The best character in the novel is Munro's son, Bunny Jr. and already you feel like he's cursed the same way as his father whom he idolizes. Bunny Jr. is a bit different in his quest for knowledge over women at least at his young age. One has to hope he'll eventually have decent role models, go back to school, go to college, and realize the true horror of everything he witnessed from parents he thought were fun and lovable in his oblivious and not nearly terrified enough state of innocence.

      Oh, and this book is very NSFW. Seriously, if you work in a standard work space, don't even think of bringing it on your lunch break. Read it in your bathroom or something. Incidentally, there are a few bathroom scenes. Yeah. NSFW.
    • 1/5
      I just feel like this book was a waste of my time. I was actually really looking forward to it and I've heard a lot of good things about it so I assumed I would at least like, if not love it. It bored me from start to finish, sadly. I could not bring myself to like Bunny even a little bit. His actions and thoughts were crude and annoying and I find it hard to enjoy a book when the protagonist irritates me so much. I didn't really feel like there was much of a plot, either. It was just Bunny wandering around with his son, being a horrible person. I didn't like it at all. It was just really not my kind of thing.
    • 4/5
      This book was difficult to read, but evoked a lot of feeling.
    • 5/5
      The Death of Bunny Monro is a novel written by musician Nick Cave. It is really worth getting the audiobook, which has musical and sound accompaniment composed by Cave. Bunny is a traveling salesman of beauty products, a sex addict and alcoholic who comes home to find his wife, Libby, has committed suicide. As he travels an increasingly unraveling journey loosely tied to his client appointments, both he and the 9-year old Bunny Jr. begin to believe Libby is haunting them. Bunny is haunted -- by his entire life. The Death of Bunny Munro is funny, tragic, and transcendent. I loved every minute of it.
    • 3/5
      After a hiatus of 20 years, The Death of Bunny Munro is Nick Cave’s second novel. From the first page, Cave very effectively puts us inside the depraved mind of Bunny Munro, a middle-aged salesman of beauty products. He confirms for us that some men are thinking non-stop about sex, no matter how appropriate it may (or may not) be. This makes for some very black humour. As we follow Bunny through a death, a funeral and a road trip, we may well wonder, how did he get to be this way? Perhaps Cave is making a commentary on the power of charisma. Bunny’s charisma has everyone elevating him to hero status: the friends who think he’s great; his female customers who open their cheque books (and often their legs) for him; his wife, who stays despite his infidelity; his intelligent but impressionable 9-year-old son, who puts his father on a high pedestal indeed; and even himself, justifying his wanton behaviour, believing he still has “it”.Cave is a master of description: “He feels like the flensed blubber a butcher may trim from a choice fillet of prime English beef…..”. The novel is full of rich imagery, some of it delightful, some grotesque. A novel with humour, horror, heartache, haunting and humanity. The author’s cameo in Bunny Munro’s death scene is a cute touch. We are left wondering if his son will survive his influence. Comedy and tragedy both, this is a powerful read.
    • 4/5
      How does one read a book like 'The Death of Bunny Munro'? Does one take it at face value, and decry its constant misogyny, its lack of any moral compass, and its unlikable protagonist? Or does one do what one might have done with Amis's 'Money' and enjoy the literary ride, or with Ellis's 'American Psycho' treat the book as satire, a commentary of consumerism culture where here sex and women are items to be consumed, though at the price of one's soul?I was given this book as a Christmas present and it took me all year to bring myself to read it. I'm not a fan generally of non-writer writers; I didn't think much of Ethan Hawke's efforts, and would have preferred him to stick with the acting; I don't even like Nick Cave's music, so I was tempted to write this one off from the very start. It was only the dim and distant feeling of otherwise disappointing the gift-giver if I gave up that kept me going at the start, and when I looked beyond the purplish prose I managed to find the spirit to run on through to the end. I'm glad I did - 'Bunny Munro' was a surprisingly good read, and if nothing else will make me reconsider Nick Cave, both as a writer and as a singer. Perhaps, if it didn't sound so contrived and conceited, it would be better to call him a wordsmith and be done with it.
    • 4/5
      The the second novel of musician Nick Cave we can follow the falling apart, self-destruction and the inevitable death of the cometics salesman Bunny Munro. Well written good story but not so sick and ultimately not so fantastic read as his first.
    • 1/5
      This novel was akin to taking a trip down memory lane with my creepy Polish great uncle Chester, who, at his sister's funeral, sidled up to my Father and in a hushed, conspiratorial tone (when my Mother walked by), said something akin to, "Wow, what do we have here? I'd love to tap that a__." To which, my stunned and gracious Father could only say, "My God Chess, that is your niece. And my wife." So I know people like Bunny Munro exist. They should never be venerated. Ever. And this book is also like fart or sex jokes. Sure, a couple are mildly funny. But 750 of them in 10 minutes? No. Lastly, the author writes like a 15-year-old boy trying for shock value in his English literature class to be "edgy." It's very badly written and seriously, who on earth wants to know about this guy's tingling perineum? Repeatedly. So alas, I dropped this back into the library return shute at page 75. I realize I may have jumped shipped before the miracle of redemption happened, but that is a risk I was very willing to take. The only upside is that it made me ink that overdue OB/GYN appointment on the off chance that anyone I have ever dated, in my entire life, ever, bears any resemblance, in any way, to the protagonist. Skip it. It's garbage.
    • 4/5
      I knew Nick Cave as a punk rocker and couldn't resist his novel. I was going to read it as a lark, with an open mind. I didn't think I would read one of the best novels I've read in a long time. Gritty, authentic, emotional and multi-layered, this book drives the reader through the twisted and increasingly out-of-control world of Bunny Munro.This sleazy, preying character reveals himself as a lost, caring father madly grieving for this wife. It's hard at any time to feel sorry for him: his repeated mistakes, the negligence of his son, his compulsive need to seduce women, all make him rather unlikable. But he is so human and fallible it's impossible not to feel for him. The other characters, Bunny Junior and Senior, Poodle as well as the cast of women are all equally engaging, unique and alternately funny, laughable or poignant. The reader never gets bored, drawn into this increasingly dark novel in which the final epiphany is both inevitable and heart-breaking.A real discovery.
    • 3/5
      Starting from the lowest-of-the-low point of a door-to-door cosmetics salesman Bunny's life takes a turn for the worst. On a self destructive roadtrip Bunny and his son Bunny Jr. travel through life's cesspit in a sexually obsessed mad dash to redemption and beyond.
    • 3/5
      Nick Cave novels are rare birds: his last, to my knowledge, was a mud-soaked piece of Southern Gothic depravity from 1989 called And the Ass Saw the Angel, in itself a brilliant, unhinged piece of writing and in its way a perfect companion piece for Cave's music which at that time was exploiting Leadbelly's romantic outlaw legacy and turning out albums' worth of excellent murder ballads, mined from Mississippi earth, and burnishing the reputations of collaborators as unusual as Polly Harvey and Kylie Minogue in doing so.If it seemed odd that an Australian should be one of the most dogged and purist perpetrators of the American romantic tradition, that was only until you saw Cave's screenplay, The Proposition, which renders his scorched-earth Australia like tones and makes a case for a rival tradition.So The (lonesome?) Death of Bunny Munro, as a title and yea, even unto about half way down the first page, sounded like it would follow the same furrow: a doomed travelling salesman - so much Arthur Miller - in a washed-up hotel room, in Brighton, eviscerating his distant wife.But did you see the dissonance there? *Brighton*? I flipped ahead, before purchasing, just to check this was in fact Brighton, Arkansas, or some other such remote, exotic and God-forsaken place. But no, this is good old Brighton, UK, present day. And Bunny Munro is no Willie Loman. And this is, aside from its wilful and exuberant sordidity, a very different sort of Nick Cave novel from his last one.As a rock musician, Nick Cave is smarter than your average bear (not hard, admittedly: the playful and extensive vocabulary of his lyrics has always attested to that) and here, Cave's linguistic invention is always on top form. This novel is over written with great zeal: deliberately and enjoyably - a talented writer consciously using a technique for a particular end, as opposed to the more common over-reach of an amateur.Though its content ranges from icky to downright repulsive, Cave's delivery is witty enough to make it always entertaining and frequently funny. Former collaborator Minogue again makes an appearance, but this time we laugh (gently) at Kylie's expense (literally, she is the butt of the joke), and Cave apologises to her in his afterword, and to Avril Lavigne, who fares far worse at Cave's hands than the Where Are They Now file she's currently inhabiting would say she was entitled to.So, unless you have a profound respect for Avril Lavigne, form excellent. Not so convinced about the substance, however. For one thing, Bunny Munro has no plot to speak of: it is a simple downhill slide into oblivion. I fancy Cave might see it as a tragedy (I can't for the life of me work out what other motivation he'd have), but a tragedy requires a flawed hero who refuses a path to redemption at his own cost. There's no such dynamic here. Bunny Munro has no redeeming features; he's irredeemable and (so sayeth the first words of the book), doomed. There's no moral to be heeded here. Nor are other available characters used to their potential. A murderous sex fiend, dressed as a devil, rampages down the country drawing ever nearer to Brighton, in a clear metaphorical parallel. But, just when it might get interesting (is this Bunny's doppelganger? Is this Bunny's fate? Will they confront each other?) the devil figure drops out of the story. Bunny's son, Bunny junior, has an eye condition which Bunny wilfully ignores despite the boy's gentle reminders - I guess something statically figurative about that - but the condition gets no worse over the course of the novel. Bunny is dogged by constant interaction with a particular fleet of well-named lorries, but short of making the obvious point that Bunny is destined to be a "Dudman", it isn't clear what the point of these was either.Basically, this isn't a story, as such. It's an expiration; a ghastly but meaningless descent into oblivion which happens to be queasily enjoyable. There is some significance to be drawn from the fact that Irvine Welsh, whose novels tend to be of a piece Filth particularly), was impressed. If that sort of thing floats your boat (it doesn't mine) you might be also. Otherwise, outside Cave's core fan base, Bunny Munro is likely to be of passing interest only.