You can read en extract from The Death of Bunny Munro at our sister site, Bookhugger.co.uk.

There is a fluffy stuffed bunny on the front cover of Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro. That first glance of fuzzy, friendly bunny, before you read any of the text, is certainly the lone warm and fuzzy point of a very strange roller coaster ride of a book. Bunny Munro is a terrible husband. He is a terrible father. He treats others with contempt and disdain. But, he is the voice of the novel, and Nick Cave keeps him just barely sympathetic.

Even with a tumultuous spiral into desperation and depravity, after all of the terrible things he has done to other people, after meaningless sex, unwitting betrayal, and criminal neglect, Bunny Munro still retains his connection with the reader and enough humanity to elicit pity. Somehow, book never loses sight of Bunny Munro’s last saving grace, that he is, after all, human.

Bunny swaggers onto the scene in a seedy motel room. His first act, his introduction, is a double betrayal of his wife: a dismissal of her depression and an affair, one in a long line, with a prostitute.  Only a few minutes from home, drunk on the entire contents of a mini-bar, Bunny, and thus the reader, alternately looks at the news report of a rampaging man in a devil suit, a pier burning down outside the window of the motel, and the prostitute who becomes the final straw for his wife. The world around him has lit itself on fire to warn Bunny of the error of his ways, but in his blindness and hubris, he cannot see what his actions are leading to.
After a few more meaningless flings, and an English breakfast that gets more attention than any of the women he has sex with, Bunny finally heads home to his wife and son, to find that the destruction he witnessed the night before has followed him into his own home. His wife is dead; she has hanged herself and left Bunny and their son to make their way together. The world has tried to warn him; Bunny still doesn’t get it:

Bunny feels this was all done in a private language of blame. He feels a surge of guilt, but he doesn’t know why. He feels victimised.

Here, at the beginning of the book, although he is uncomfortable, he is still secure in himself and his abilities. Bunny believes that all he has to do is follow the client list, charm the women, continue on with his life, and everything will be fine. However, his life quickly begins to spiral out of his control, and soon his samples and his charming face have been thrown out of house after house. As the list of customers grows shorter, Bunny becomes more and more unhinged, losing his way on a path he used to know by heart. His young son is there, for all of the degradation and dismal experiences. Bunny Jr. clutches his encyclopaedia and his admiration for his father tightly to his chest and strives to be what his father needs, looks to find where they should go next. With all of his faults, Bunny Munro still has the love of his son, still is a hero in his eyes and worthy of imitation. It is the love of his son that helps Bunny find the humanity to seek redemption, and, by the end, it is the seven year old who leads–who can figure out where to go next:

“‘You see?’ says his mother.’You are the strong one.’ ‘What will we do about Dad?’ says Bunny Junior. His mother runs her fingers through the boy’s hair, then says, not unkindly, ‘Your father cannot help you. He is truly lost.’ ‘That’s OK, Mummy,’ says the boy. ‘I am the navigator.’

And yet, and yet, Bunny seeks redemption and reformation. A man who spends his entire life using others returns to a place he loved as a child and gains back some of his innocence and humanity.  And his child, his shadow, his imitation, his legacy, is finally safe. Finally, in the end, Bunny is granted the innocent kiss of a child to add one good mark to the hundred adulterous and illicit kisses of betrayal. Bunny is merely  a reflection of the world he lives in. A fun-house, warped, cloudy, and cracked reflection to be sure, but a reflection none the less.  Nothing he does is inhuman, and the presence in the book of a “real” devil, horned and rampaging , serves to emphasize that, awful as Bunny is, he is still human, capable of reform and redemption-whether or not he succeeds in finding either. Nick Cave’s novel has at its heart a man who grotesquely exaggerates the greed, gluttony, and lust that are humanity’s birthright, but he is still a man, and it is a triumph of the writing that his humanity, no matter how covered by layers of dross, still manages to shine through.

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