Bunny
by Mona Awad · 2019
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3.8/5
Mona Awad's hallucinatory debut is a formally accomplished descent into alienation that mistakes surreal intensity for psychological depth. Uncompromising and strange, but ultimately more atmospheric than illuminating.
Mona Awad's Bunny is a formally audacious descent into alienation that mistakes hallucinatory excess for psychological depth.
This is a novel that earns its strangeness through voice and structure rather than through plot or character revelation. Awad writes from inside Samantha's fractured consciousness with such commitment that the book becomes a formal achievement even when its narrative logic falters. It is a book to admire for what it attempts, though not always for what it accomplishes.
Bunny announces itself immediately as a work uninterested in conventional realism. We meet Samantha, a lonely MFA student whose sardonic interior monologue dominates every page, as she navigates a writing program populated by girls she calls 'the Bunnies'—a collective of conventionally beautiful, seemingly vapid peers whose existence offends her sensibilities. Awad constructs the novel as a fever dream narrated by someone whose grip on reality is tenuous at best; the prose itself becomes unreliable, shifting between sharp observation and grotesque fantasy without warning. This formal choice—making the reader experience Samantha's alienation rather than simply observe it—is the novel's greatest strength.
What propels the narrative, insofar as it propels at all, is Samantha's relationship with Ava, her only friend, and her mounting resentment toward the Bunnies. But Awad resists the conventional architecture of plot; instead of building toward revelation or confrontation, the novel spirals inward, becoming increasingly baroque and hallucinatory. The writing voice remains consistently excellent—precise, funny, self-aware in ways that prevent the protagonist from becoming merely insufferable. Awad understands that Samantha's contempt masks genuine terror, and that understanding animates nearly every page.
The novel's formal inventiveness extends to its structure and typography. Awad plays with fragmentation, repetition, and visual spacing in ways that mirror Samantha's mental state without feeling gimmicky. There are moments of genuine unease; the book achieves a dreamlike dread that lingers. The prose itself becomes a kind of character, and readers who surrender to Awad's wavelength will find themselves genuinely unsettled by what begins as social comedy and transforms into something far stranger and more disturbing.
Yet here lies the central reservation: the hallucinatory intensity eventually becomes its own dead end. By the novel's final third, the increasingly surreal imagery—the Bunnies' physical transformations, the body horror, the apocalyptic imagery—begins to feel decorative rather than revelatory. We never quite understand what Samantha's imagination is *doing* beyond consuming itself; the novel mistakes grotesquerie for insight. Awad seems more interested in the texture of Samantha's alienation than in interrogating it, which means the book ultimately offers little purchase on why her loneliness matters or what it costs her. The formal audacity cannot quite compensate for the thinness of the emotional core.
Bunny remains a distinctive work that will reward readers patient with its particular brand of strangeness. It is a novel about the power of imagination to distort and destroy, and Awad's execution of that theme through voice and structure is genuinely accomplished. But it is also a novel that mistakes atmosphere for meaning, and readers seeking psychological complexity beneath the hallucinatory surface may find themselves disappointed. Still, there is real artistry here—the kind of committed, uncompromising artistry that demands to be reckoned with, even when it doesn't fully succeed.
Key Takeaways
- Alienation and imagination
- Form as content
- Unreliable consciousness
Summary
- Samantha, an alienated MFA student, narrates her descent into a hallucinatory mental landscape dominated by resentment toward her conventionally beautiful peers, 'the Bunnies.'
- Awad's primary achievement is formal: the prose itself becomes unreliable and fragmented, forcing readers to experience Samantha's fractured consciousness rather than observe it from a distance.
- The novel uses typography, repetition, and visual spacing to mirror psychological disintegration, creating genuine unease and dreamlike dread throughout much of its narrative.
- Samantha's only meaningful relationship is with Ava, her best friend, whose presence grounds the story in something approaching emotional stakes.
- The narrative resists conventional plot architecture, preferring to spiral inward into increasingly baroque and grotesque imagery that blurs reality and fantasy.
- The voice is consistently sharp and funny, animated by Awad's understanding that Samantha's contempt masks genuine terror and loneliness.
- By the final third, the surreal imagery becomes decorative rather than revelatory, and the novel offers little insight into *why* Samantha's alienation matters beyond its aesthetic expression.
- Despite its limitations, Bunny represents genuinely audacious literary ambition that will reward readers who surrender to its particular strangeness, even if the emotional payoff remains elusive.
Chapter Guide
- Chapter 1: The Smut Salon and the Bunnies
- Samantha, a lonely MFA student at Warren University, feels alienated by her peers and finds herself drawn to a clique of overly sweet, affluent girls known as the Bunnies, whose 'Smut Salon' workshops perplex and disturb her.
- Chapter 2: A Strange Invitation
- Despite her disdain, Samantha is unexpectedly invited to the Bunnies' exclusive 'Smut Salon.' She attends out of morbid curiosity, witnessing unsettling rituals and a disturbing, almost hallucinatory, display of their creative process.
- Chapter 3: The Garden Party
- Samantha finds herself increasingly entangled with the Bunnies, culminating in a surreal garden party at one of their palatial homes. The event blurs lines between reality and fantasy, with strange experiments and an unsettling undercurrent of violence.
- Chapter 4: Making Bunnies
- Initiated deeper into the Bunnies' world, Samantha discovers the true, horrifying nature of their 'creative' work: they use dark magic to reanimate dead animals and even people, transforming them into grotesque, sentient dolls.
- Chapter 5: The Sacrifice and the Swap
- As the Bunnies' rituals escalate, Samantha is forced to make a terrible choice, leading to a sacrifice and a profound, identity-altering event. She questions her own sanity and the reality of her experiences.
Read the full review at https://reviewerinsight.com/book/69ed4f8af2f1713bdeb2c484/bunny