User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
super fucking bizarre. i loved it.
i usually don't compare titles to explain books, but i think it's the best way to explain this one soooo
heathers meets the craft meets frankenstein. if that sounds like a good time to you READ THIS.
Rating: really liked it
oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for BEST HORROR 2019! what will happen?this book is straight-up bonkers. seeing this was set “at an elite new england university” with an exclusive clique at its center and seeing it compared to
Heathers, i went into it expecting a Megan Abbott-y/The Secret History-y type of deal; full of those dark and toxic currents that define adolescent girlhood, where affection shifts into power struggle at the drop of a hat, but also featuring a bunch of soulless smarty-pants big on ritualistic gatherings and down for some light murder.
yes and please
this… is not that. which is not to say it’s bad AT ALL, it’s just not what i thought i was getting into. it is ALSO not, although this is frequently true of other books, that it is being misrepresented by overzealous marketing. you see, it is also compared to The Vegetarian, which i have not read, but now that i’ve looked into that book more, if i HAD read it, i probably would have been less taken aback by what this book actually is.
which is, as previously stated, bonkers.
this is The Secret History through the looking glass, carroll’s white rabbit split into four excessively co-dependent MFA students; twitchy and touchy-feely and calling each other “bunny,” operating symbiotically(?) as a “we;” each maintaining a specifically regimented style of expression in appearance and craft, but otherwise inseparable.
samantha, our narrator and entry into this world, is the fifth person in the workshop, on the awkward periphery of these cooing girls who always seem to be monkey-grooming one another and giggling and sparkling all over the place. unlike the bunnies, who are rich and well-assimilated in the jargony twaddle of MFA programs the world over (
”I appreciate the uncertainty the piece gestures toward…I just think she could go further into the dream space. It’s so interesting how she performs and reenacts trauma.”), samantha is planted firmly in outsider territory; a scholarship student whose darker themes are called ‘angry,’ ‘mean,’ and ‘distant’ by the bunnies, from whom she seems content to maintain her distance; aloof and sarcastically eviscerating them from afar alongside her art school dropout bestie ava; she of the fishnet gloves and veil, the asymmetrical haircut and tattered underwear-as-outerwear look.
and then, unexpectedly, samantha is formally, by way of origami swan, invited into the bunnies’ inner circle, where she learns an awful lot about creativity, process, vulnerability, and true power.
so yeah, it’s VERY reminiscent of
Heathers, with its interplay of the frivolous and the dark and the comedic, as well as individual and group dynamics,
but it’s just as much molly ringwald and annie potts in
Pretty in Pink; outsider snark as a weapon against the allure of the wealthy pretty people, and the spiritual cost of capitulation (which john hughes never addressed, but i always inferred),
and a vision board collage of style and theme that’s like
Desperately Seeking Susan and
Pump Up the Volume and
Heathers and 92% of john hughes’ oeuvre. and also, oddly, the spice girls, since the bunnies adopt a particular quirky fashion-based persona that sets them apart within their
collective persona.
it’s not bonkers right out of the gate. at first, it seems like it's gonna be a fun-poking campus novel. this book is so funny in its depiction of the MFA world; the fetishizations and the relentless cleverness and posturing and critiques, which i can only imagine is much worse now as millennials tiptoe thru the triggers trying to make art that offends no one and supplying feedback that is nothing but praise, even for the kind of self-consciously manufactured glop people like the bunnies produce. like the one samantha calls “the Duchess,” who writes “inaccessible and cryptic” pieces, she calls
proems, “etched on panes of glass using a dagger-shaped diamond she wears around her neck.” or the work of the one samantha has dubbed “Vignette,” who shares “a series of unpunctuated vignettes about a woman named Z who pukes up soup while thinking nihilistic thoughts, then has anal sex in a trailer,” for whom samantha has little patience.
I hate Vignette’s pieces. They are dreary word puzzles I’m always too bored and annoyed to solve. Each paragraph is a half smile, half frown, way up its own asshole. Also, they beg questions like: when on her perilous, pirouetting journey from Interlochen to Barnard was she ever in a trailer?
but, of course, in a workshop of four hydra-like girls and a fawning mentor, an outsider does not have the luxury of honestly speaking her mind.
”What do you think, Samantha?” Fosco asks me.
That it’s a piece of pretentious shit. That is says nothing, gives nothing. That I don’t understand it, that probably no one does and no one ever will. That not being understood is a privilege I can’t afford. That I can’t believe this woman got paid to come here. That I think she should apologize to trees. Spend a whole day on her knees in the forest, looking up at the trembling aspens and oaks and whatever other trees paper is made of with tears in her languid eyes and say, I’m fucking sorry. I’m sorry that I think I’m so goddamned interesting when it is clear that I am not interesting. Here’s what I am: I’m a boring tree murderess.
But I look at Vignette, at Creepy Doll, at Cupcake, the Duchess. All of them staring at me now with shy smiles.
“I think I’d like to see more of the soup too,” I hear myself say.
samantha herself is not immune to that stereotypically, overly fussy brand of MFA writing, even though we don’t get to see much of the work she produces for the workshop. however, as the narrator, everything is filtered through her descriptions, and the prose is precise, overly crafted; the reader is bludgeoned with adjectives, with a particular emphasis on smells pinned into place with poetic words, where the bunnies’ outfits are described in every scene, creating a sensory overload that is frequently original and poetic, but is sometimes just… too much. don’t get me wrong, i loved most of the writing,
She shivers at the view of the grand trees, as if they’re not trees at all but something truly vile, like all the rosy-blond light that seems to forever bathe the campus is about to punch her in the face like a terrible fist of rich.
there’s just a lot of chewy prose here and sometimes it’s a description-bog.
and then… bonkers ensues.
it’s really fun and sharp and shivery, with a macabre fairy-tale overlay that gives it a unique spin on the coming-of-age tale. "coming-of-age" might seem misplaced, considering these are MFA students, but they read much younger than their actual age; not just the self-consciously girly-girl bunnies, but also in the themes samantha brings to the narrative; her awkwardness and loneliness and leftover-adolescent self-consciousness about fitting in; finding her place — for all of her ostensible disgust at the bunnies, their camaraderie is not without appeal for someone defined by loneliness and survival-mode embracing of their own otherness.
it may not have been the book i thought i was going to read, but it was a very pleasant surprise, and even though i am being intentionally vague about where this one’ll take you, i encourage you to find out for yourself, because bonkers is way better than boring.
************************************
that was... unexpected. i need to process this one a little bit. review TK.
come to my blog!!
Rating: really liked it
Wtf was that.
Rating: really liked it
this was the weirdest book i've read in my life and i don't know if i loved it or hated it but it was amazing and broke my brain
Rating: really liked it
2nd read: October 2021buddy read with caitlin & my patrons
★★★★★!!!!!!!!!!!!
1st read: October 2020buddy read with jaime & caitlin
★★★★★
Rating: really liked it
I would join a cult with no questions asked.
I can't even pretend that I'm better than that, or smarter than that, or capable-er of reading red flags than that. The fact of the matter is that not only do I hate making decisions (and therefore find the idea of someone making all of mine for me very compelling), I also (due to years of being a teacher's pet nerd) am desperate to be cool.
Make that cult led by a bunch of hot girls in cute dresses and I am done for.
This is a very cool, very...funny in the way of Satire, very creepyspooky book that I enjoyed quite a bit. I picked it up as part of my need to read every work of literary fiction with a low average rating and a female protagonist who is hard to like, so I didn't really expect to appreciate the reading experience. But I did.
This book is also fairly big on BookTok, and while most of my TikTok feed is made up of the most unhinged and inexplicable videos to exist in the universe since the end of Vine, I occasionally brush with literature (presumably due to my username being "emmareadstoomuch"). People on BookTok like to say very dumb things about this book, like "i liked most of it but it rlly lost its way at the end :/" and "bunny was like good but also it totally stopped making sense" as if endings are something authors just make up at the last minute and they have nothing to do with anything.
That is so stupid it triggers my fight or flight, and the ending of this is good.
The end.
Bottom line: Books like this forever!!!
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pre-reviewi don't know what it says about me that after reading this book, i just really want to be a blonde rich demon girl in a pastel dress eating mini foods...
okay, i do know. it's that i'm psychologically unwell.
review to come / 3.5ish
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currently-reading updatesit's giving a secret history
(this is an observation i made based on title alone, only to discover that the woman who wrote cat person made the same one presumably after reading the whole book)
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tbr reviewhad to add this to my tbr, as a big fan of borderline unpleasant literary fiction about unlikable women
Rating: really liked it
people get exhausted trying to figure me out, and i just let them - this book @ me, midway through
this is just bizarre and not in a way that has me wanting to figure out what happens next. i wanted to slam my head into a wall trying to puzzle my way through writing that used phrases like "gynecological hand gestures." like what the fuck does that even mean. i guess i now understand people's inability to put this book into words in their reviews. because the book has nothing tangible to explain.
dnf @ like... 40%?
Rating: really liked it
*deep, deep breath*
*lung-bursting shrieks*
*choked swear words*
*another deep breath in, then out*
Alright, with that out of the way, let's get this shit over with.
MASSIVE FUCKING SPOILER WARNING!!!!!!
Words cannot, and I mean CANNOT, express how disappointed I am with this novel. I went from, "wow, this is so creepy, I love it!" to "well, that was a little disappointing," to "FUCK THIS SHIT SO FUCKING HARD." The best word I can use to sum up my emotions right now (aside from the obvious ones like rage, hatred, and disappointed) is BETRAYED. I feel so FUCKING betrayed by this novel because there were so many things that I liked and it legitimately feels like the story saw my joy and said, "oh, you're happy? That won't do, let's fix that, shall we?" and turned this book into a fucking dumpster fire by the end of it.
Before I start rage-hating this book, I want to express the one aspect that I loved for most of it: the writing. Holy shit, the writing was amazing! The details given to locations, the senses, appearances, even emotions was done so well and added depth to scenes that ordinarily wouldn't get. However, the amount of detail started to weigh down the story considerably towards the end, to the point where you could skim whole paragraphs and not miss anything crucial.
One thing that I loved about the writing was the detail given to each of the Bunnies, specifically from Samantha's perspective. For example, one of the Bunnies she referred to as Cupcake, because she always wore bright colored dresses (like brightly colored frosting) and smelled like sweet fruit (a common ingredient in cupcakes). What was interesting about this is that this can be interpreted as objectification. Samantha doesn't see Cupcake as a person (for most of the book) but rather as a consumable product, and since they are both writing majors and they are told to focus on The Body, her nickname and description unintentionally characterizes Cupcake as a consumable object rather than a person. I could on about the other women in the story, but for the sake of this review's length I'll keep it at that. Suffice to say, that was an aspect I truly enjoyed. Too bad it couldn't carry the rest of the fucking story.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves, let's talk about the main character Samantha, or as I like to call her, Our Lady of Perpetual Pity Parties. Look, I get it, her entire character arc is supposed to be about her whining about how much her life sucks and constantly needing other people for support only for her to realize that in the real world, sometimes you have to do difficult things on your own, and give her a triumphant concluding chapter. Yeah, here's how I feel about that:
FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
All Samantha did for LITERALLY 3/4 OF THE BOOK was whine, whine, whine about her life and how she hates people but can't tell them, and LIES, LIES LIES. Holy shit, did she tell the fucking truth AT ALL in this story? I couldn't tell because the author was SO ADAMANT about making her lie about FUCKING EVERYTHING that I honestly couldn't tell. I was so done with her self-created and self-attended pity parties that by the time she actually did something it didn't feel satisfying.
Quick side note, I hated pretty much everyone in this fucking book. They were all self-entitled, judgmental, and uninteresting. Moving on.
Now it's time to talk about the moment where this turned from awesome to disappointing. You know how the summary promotes the idea that these are women bringing to life their "dark fantasies"? Yeah, sounds interesting, doesn't it? You wanna know what their "dark fantasies" are?
Men. Their ideal, fantasy-created men. I'm not kidding. They literally sacrifice bunnies so that they can create their own men. Oh, but they're not called men, instead they're "Drafts," "Darlings," or "Hybrids". Yeah, WHAT FUCKING EVER. I was expecting twisted, disturbing creatures birthed from twisted minds, not their fantasy guys. Seriously, fuck this plot twist so hard, it was such a disappointment.
And to add the cherry on top of this disappointing story, we have the totally off the rails depiction of women hating. That's effectively what this story boils down to, women hating that is suspiciously juvenile but it takes place in a college so it's TOTALLY ADULT. Here's the plot: unpopular girl gets drafted into popular group, leaves the group for awhile, that group gets bitchy revenge, girl returns to group, then leaves group again, girl gets final revenge at the end. HOW IS THIS NOT A YA STORY?! Seriously, I have seen this EXACT FORMULA at least half a dozen times already, but because it takes place in a college its ADULT?! FUCK THAT SHIT! Oh, and let's talk about the women hating, shall we?
First off, Samantha is unfathomably judgmental to the Bunnies, until she is officially inducted into their ranks. The Bunnies are always cooing and coddling each other, all the while saying nasty and judgmental things sugarcoated as suggestions or whatever. So, you know, there's that. I thought this story was going to be about rising above all that and be a feminist piece but NOPE! You want to know what unravels their little friend group?
A FUCKING MAN.
I shit you not, Samantha is able to "create" a man that all of the Bunnies love (all other men were failures. Oh and Samantha was able to do this ON HER FIRST TRY, because OF FUCKING COURSE, why the fuck not?!) and they tear each other AND THEMSELVES apart to please him, going so far as to LITERALLY FIGHT EACH OTHER for his affection. And you want to know the best part? Based off of my interpretation of the text, Max (Samantha's "creation") exists to do all the things she wants to do but can't because she's too scared (like date Ava, her friend, or destroy the Bunnies). Are you telling me that Samantha had to create A MALE VERSION OF HERSELF to be able to do all the things she wanted to do before her plot induced epiphany kicked in?! Oh, and speaking of endings, you want to know what her "new and improved" self does when approaching the Bunnies after Max is destroyed? She acts snarky and condescending towards them. Female empowerment at its finest, AM I RIGHT, GUYS?! Holy shit, how is it possible for a story to derail so spectacularly?! (Although the same thing happened with The Black Coats, so I guess anything's possible).
Welp, that about does it. All of my rage and hatred has finally been quelled, thanks to my best friend, the caps lock key. In closing, I do not recommend this book to anyone, I wish I could have lit my copy on fire and throw it out a window but it was a library book so I couldn't, I hope everyone has a nice day and never has to suffer like I did reading this book.
Rating: really liked it
Hmmmm.....
I have no idea what I just read or how to review it. Does that work as a proper review? I'm not even going to attempt discussing the plot because...because.... See? I truly don't know how to.
Bizarre, strange, peculiar, unusual are just a few words that come to mind if I had to try and describe this mind fuck of a book. It's a very slip-streamy type of novel. A novel in which the entire time I read I had no idea what was going on and I still don't. Not a fucking clue.
"And then they hug each other so hard I think their chests are going to implode. I would even secretly hope for it from where I sat, stood, leaned in the opposite corner of the lecture hall, department lounge, auditorium, bearing witness to four grown women - my academic peers - cooingly strangle each other hello. Or goodbye. Or just because your so amazing, Bunny. How fiercely they gripped each other's pink and white bodies, forming a hot little circle of such rib-crushing love and understanding that it took my breath away. And the nuzzling of ski-jump noses and peach fuzzy cheeks. Temples pressed against temples in a way that made me think of the labial rubbing bonobo or the telepathy of beautiful murderous children in horror films. All eight of their eyes shut tight as if this collective asphyxiation were a kind of religious bliss. All four of their glossy mouths making squealing sounds of monstrous love that hurt my face.
I love you, Bunny." Did I like it? I kind of did. I can't deny the talent of this author. She's a wordsmith without a doubt. This book is being compared to Heathers and I think it's an appropriate comparison only this book is so much stranger. So much weirder. Some of the observations made by Samantha, our narrator, are downright snarky and hilarious and I was digging the vibe but then it all gets to be a bit too much. A bit too "out there" even for a weirdo like me.
Toward the end of the book I came across this quote in which I highlighted because it summed up my thoughts exactly:
"JUST SAY IT. TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED. TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THIS MEANS AND WHAT YOU DID EXACTLY." 3 *WTF just happened?* stars!
Thank you to Edelweiss & Viking Books for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Rating: really liked it
One of the
weirdest fucking books I’ve ever read.
This book is the product child of a love triangle: if
Mean Girls and
Alice in Wonderland fell in love with
The Craft.
If you like pretentious people in cliques and sacrificial cults and exploding heads and truly WTF moments, all at the same time getting their MFAs in writing and lit?
Then this one is for you.
4 STARS
Rating: really liked it
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There are those bizarre and experimental books that manage to be entertaining, transgressive, and on occasion even thought-provoking. And then, there are books like Bunny
whose weirdness largely rests on overusing the word bunny (which appears approximately
350 times, one time too many).
An intentionally silly story that owes more to Scream Queens and The Babysitter then Heathers or Mean Girls. If you are picking up Bunny thinking that it is some sort of intriguing campus novel, you should reconsider given that this book is the anthesis to The Secret History.
If you are hoping for some sort of absurdist black comedy à la Yorgos Lanthimos, think again. The 'satirical horror' I was hoping to encounter in Bunny was largely MIA.
Each page of this novel tries to be 'sarcastic' by exaggerating the mannerisms and words of certain groups of people (in this case a creative writing clique) which made for a weary reading experience.
Writing about writing is never an easy endeavour since there is the high risk that you will remind your readers that they are indeed 'reading' a fictitious work. Since the main cast in Bunny is part of a creative writing MFA program...
we were constantly reminded of how inane criticism can be. The five girls part of this program are apparently only able to write fiction that reflects their personal life or preferences...
funnily enough, a lot of the criticism that these characters throw at each other's pieces of writing could easily be aimed at Bunny (
oh, the irony):
“Um, what the fuck is this, please? This makes no sense. This is coy and this is willfully obscure and no one but [the author] will ever get this […] spoiled, fragmented, lazy, pretentious […] And then I feel like screaming JUST SAY IT. TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED. TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THIS MEANS AND WHAT YOU DID WITH HIM EXACTLY.”
Four of these girls are part of a clique that is
the ultimate parody of cliques. From the first few pages they are presented as some sort of 'hive-mind', some sort of multi-conscious entity. Some of their conversations between them—as well as the narrator's observations about them—
could be amusing.
Although the narrator keeps insisting that she is 'different' (aka the only 'big' difference between her and the bunnies is her finances)
she falls prey to this clique. Personally, I don't think the story provides with a convincing reason for the MC to fall in with these girls. Even when the Mc sees their most secretive activities...it seemed that she stayed with them out of laziness (or merely as a way to further the plot).
The weirdness of this story seems contrived. This whole novel seems (rather ironically) like an exercise for a creative writing class. Many of the 'bizarre' elements in this story were predictable and had me rolling my eyes.
The whole book is like a joke that goes on for too long. The first few chapters were amusing and the scenes that took place in the creative writing workshop were on point (and reminded me of the creative writing module I took in my first year of uni):
“Samantha, we’re at Warren. The most experimental, groundbreaking writing school in the country. This goes way beyond genre. It subverts the whole concept of genre.”
“And gender narratives.”
“And the patriarchy of language.”
“Not to mention the whole writing medium.”
“It basically fucks the writing medium, Samantha. Which is dead anyway, you know?”
“Exactly. This is about the Body. Performing the Body. The Body performing in all its nuanced viscerality.”
Yet,
soon enough the repetitiveness of these exchanges grew tiresome and the style of the narrative became increasingly annoying and unnecessary. The narrative mimics the language—and perhaps vision—of this clique of girls:
it is sweet, sticky, and extra. If you like eating candy floss until you feel sick you might be up for it...the narrative—if not the whole story—is
a parody that lacks subtlety or real wit:
Here at Mini they have many cupcakes in mini but they should have more. Why don’t they have more? They should have more in mini, more! We tell them how they should have more in mini and they do not seem to make a note of it.
The narrative's style was
so repetitive! All too frequently words were repeated three times in a row in a cheap attempt to give urgency to the story.
The plot (if we can call it that) even in its 'wtf moments' is tedious.
The characters and story seem merely a backdrop to this sickeningly sweet and repetitive language (hair like feathers, tiny pink-y small-ish hand, glossy this and that, teensy-weensy girls who eat teensy-weensy food).
This book didn't inspire feelings of panic or fear, which I was expecting given its summary...I was never afraid of these
demented girls and their stupid activities. A lot of the things seem to just happen to the MC as if she isn't capable of these
laughable 'terrible' things from happening (
insert eye roll here). Again, I find it ironic that the MC's own writing is criticised for this exact reason:
“Although we could hardly call her a heroine, could we? I mean, could we even call her that, Samantha? […] She’s quite passive, Samantha, isn’t she?”
I guess you could argue that this is all 'intentional'. The stupid characters, the saccharine and repetitive language, the MC's spinelessness...these things come across this way on purpose...but that seems like a cheap excuse to make the
lazy and unfunny elements of your story 'deliberate'.
The worst 'sin' of all is that this book leaves us with a less than favourable opinion about writing and criticism...which isn't a great message.
Rating: really liked it
1 Star
Well, I didn’t like it!
And I think everyone was hitting the crack pipe. I’m weird and messed up enough without this 🤣😂
And it seems like they were blowing up bunnies or some weird shit
Yeah...
So, I’m climbing out of the rabbit hole and on to the next book!
Happy Reading!
Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾
BLOG: https://melissa413readsalot.blogspot....
Rating: really liked it
“A book should be like an ax.”
Rating: really liked it
Okay, what just happened here?
I'll quote one of the characters to explain my feelings about Bunny--"And then I feel like screaming JUST SAY IT. TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED. TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THIS MEANS."
The publisher's blurb doesn't even begin to capture what happens in Bunny. At first, I thought I'd be reading an R rated version of Mean Girls.
As I read, I found that wasn't quite right, so then I thought, "Okay, maybe it's Stephen King does Mean Girls."
It turned out that that description didn't capture it, either. The best I can come up with is "Stephen King trips on acid and writes an R rated Mean Girls."
Bunny is so strange that it's hard to form an opinion, but I think I liked it. (Maybe my opinion will change after I sit with it a bit, or maybe I'll be equally as confused.) The weirdness did make some parts of the the plot hard to follow, but I think Bunny is supposed to be disorienting by design. On another note, I appreciated Awad's sense of humor, which is on full display when she describes the Bunnies for the first time. She definitely places us right inside the MC's head!
This novel is so odd that it's not going to be for everyone, but I'd rate this a 3.5/5 rounded up to 4 stars.
Thanks to Edelweiss and Viking for providing me with a DRC of this novel.
Rating: really liked it
Consider me SHOOKETH.
