Nick Cave's Second Novel - The Death of Bunny Munroe
When I first saw the candy crusted bunny leering at me from a shelf in a bookshop, I thought ‘ah…another post- modern whatever self-absorbed ramble from a worthy author’s jadedness’. I have a particular weakness for being both attracted to and repelled by such narcissism which is why my eye wandered up to ‘The Death of Bunny Munro
’. When, a second later, I actually realised that it was in fact Nick Cave’s new novel that I was looking at, I felt a characteristic shift in my (now) second impression. The cover now looked eccentric, quirky and obviously sinister. I snatched it up immediately. I mean, it’s Nick Cave, why wouldn’t I? I was absolutely certain that this novel was going to be downright profound. I was already forming opinions on the bus on the way home, which I could later relay to my friends when I had finished it. In true Cave fashion, however, my expectations were dashed and having read the thing in absolute record timing, I was left completely confused, rocked and shocked and in the certain knowledge that Nick Cave had gone somewhere completely new.
The most obvious element from the get-go is the in-your face sexually maniacal ‘Bunny’, the anti-hero to end them all. He is a make up salesman with a ridiculous and pathetically looked after quiff in the middle of his forehead and who seems to have accepted some bizarre physical duty to nail every and any girl who comes into his range. The novel is divided into three parts, ‘Salesman’, ‘Cocksman’ and ‘Deadman’ and I must admit that persisting through ‘Salesman’ was indeed difficult for my admittedly girly sensibilities. You are left in no doubt whatsoever as to just how perverted this guy is. Restaurants, cafes, hotel rooms, parks – anywhere and I mean anywhere proves to be too much for the nymphomaniac who delicately keeps a ‘cum-encrusted sock’ underneath his car seat you know, just in case. The heroic sock indeed comes in handy as he drives through the weekend Brighton traffic and is bombarded by a festival of legs, breasts and other girl parts: ‘white ones, young ones, old ones, give me a minute and I’ll find your beauty spot ones, yummy single mothers, the bright joyful breasts of waxed bikini babes, the pebble-stippled backsides of women fresh from the beach – the whole thing fucking immense man {….}’These sightings are rounded off by an unexpected airing of Kylie Minogue’s ‘Spinning Around’ on the car radio which forces Bunny to take a ‘vicious, horn, blaring swerve, rerouting down Fourth Avenue, already screwing the top off a sample of hand cream’ and relieving himself in total exultation, wondering if his wife, Libby might by ‘up for it when he gets home’.
Bunny really is a sick creation and has moments of really over-the-line behaviour, including the rape of a heroin junkie who reminds him of Avril Lavigne.
It’s not, however, that simple though as there are moments of mitigation, chiefly seen in the figure of his son, Bunny Junior who worships him completely. Bunny Junior thinks his dad is ‘amazing’ despite the clear role his dad played in the suicide of his mother and the extent to which he is neglected by him.
Cave knows how to shock you but he also knows how to reel it in before you put the book down in disgust. There are also moments of viciously funny humour where Bunny’s horrifying lack of fatherly attention is lit up like a Christmas tree. Bunny Junior has blephritis in his eyes and as the story degrades into an almost hallucinogenic despair, he jokes about the possibility of blindness: ‘ I think I might need a white stick and a dog soon, Dad.’ ‘Dad’ is of course slightly too busy staring at an underage girl (3) next to him and explaining to an irate mother that it’s ‘not to say that in a few years……well, you know…..’ .
Much of what directs the depth of the story is the fact that Bunny really cannot detect his own inadequacies as a husband and a father. He is truthfully, tragically and impossibly detatched from any form of soul searching although his moments of prophetic introspection prove that although he can see just how fatally flawed he is, he knows that he can simply do nothing about it. He really is as damned as the opening ‘I am damned’ declares: ‘He feels that somewhere down the line he has made a grave mistake, but this realisation passes in a dreadful heartbeat, and is gone – leaving him in a room at the Greenville Hotel, in his underwear with nothing but himself and his appetites.’
If anyone has either read or seen Cave reading bits of ‘And the Ass Saw the Angel’, you will notice just how far he has come as a writer. There is no intellectualising here and the seriously stripped-down language yells at the top of its voice that Cave has nothing to prove anymore. The writing is simple, honest and unflinching as he confronts all of his demons head on. Nick Cave is writing with the lights on.
It might have only been released in Australia, but we have entirely different cover. It’s a dull red, and the image is of the crotch of a woman in red bikini underwear. It is shot from the angle of the bottom of a bed, as if you were crawling up over her onto the bed. Slightly less sinister than the bunny, but only if bunnies scare you.