Despite the title, THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNRO is not a novel from my preferred genre of crime fiction. Defining exactly what it is, however, is a lot harder. Nick Cave is one of my favourite musicians, despite so much of his subject matter being somewhat more biblical than would normally be of any particular appeal. With this novel he's moved from the overtly biblical, Southern Gothic feel of AND THE ASS SAW THE ANGEL released in 1989, but not completely away from some of all of its core themes. THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNRO explores human frailty, fanaticism and vengeance, set this time within the confines of a small family, over which Bunny Munro's behaviour casts a sad, reflective, self-interested and yet strangely touching pall.

Bunny is a man who gives into his natural urges. Constantly. He's utterly obsessed with sex, his every waking moment seems to be devoted to the pursuit of casual sex. He gives nobody a second thought - his conquests, his wife, their young son. All he thinks about, all he can do is pursue sex. When his wife finally gives up the constant pain of their marriage - and her life - and kills herself with Bunny Junior in the flat with her - Bunny is still unable to grasp the message she leaves him. He's also not quite able to grasp the ramifications of being a sole parent to a sad and lost little boy, even though somewhere inside his self-obsessed, pleasure-obsessed, mindless behaviour something human, something beyond himself, is tantalisingly close to being reached by Bunny Junior. But Bunny Senior isn't able / willing / open enough to change, to let go of his own, to stand aside from his pleasure, to look outside of himself. Or at least not in time he isn't.

There were aspects of this book that made me profoundly uncomfortable. Not the sexual descriptions - which are prolific, and explicit, but rather the starkness of Bunny's obsession with sex. The starkness in which pursuit became predation, pleasure became cruel, made me wince. A lot. Especially as what little control there had been simply gave way. The violence implicit in that one person's complete disregard for everyone around him, writ large against his little boy's unconditional love, acceptance, sorrow, understanding. The finale in which everything, all pleasure, all pursuit, is revealed as pointless.

There were also aspects of this book that soared, that were hilarious. Gallows humour maybe, certainly absurdist, THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNRO grabs you, shakes you, slaps you to make sure you're still paying attention, then tugs your heart-strings. Then it wraps them around your ears and tweaks like crazy until your heart aches and your ears ring.

I could not get the lyrics from INTO MY ARMS out of my head as I read this book, which didn't help as THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNRO made me cry. A lot. I read it a second time. Laughed, winced, lost my temper with Bunny, cried a lot all over again.

Once again wishing goodreads let us give half-stars because this book feels like it deserves more than three but also doesn't merit four.
Read it purely for the upcoming adaptation (the girls who know know), and I think it will transfer beautifully onto the screen, but as a book itself, it did not leave me as satisfied as I had hoped it would. There were some cathartic moments, for sure, and I enjoyed most of it, but overall, I feel like it could have been way more, idk.
3.5/5 stars and (im)patiently waiting for the TV adaptation because a certain actor will make the title character SHINE, I just know it.

70/100

DNF. I only read 4 chapters, but it is not for me.

Nick Cave is a better song writer than novelist. And that's OK, cuz he's a hell of a song writer. If he was that good of a novelist, I'd resent him deeply.

Irvine Welsh, in the blurb on the back cover, compares Nick Cave to Cormac McCarthy and Franz Kafka. That's a tad misleading. But, I'll offer perhaps an even more unlikely comparison: Thomas Pynchon. No, not the deep, paranoid, and paradoxical Pynchon, but Pynchon at his most slapstick and lucid.

Here's a quotation I pulled from Pynchon's "Inherent Vice":

"Puck lit up, had a long hit, and handed it over to Doc, who unthinkingly took it and inhaled. Little knowing till too late that Puck after years of faithful attendance at a ninja school in Boyle Heights had become a master in the technique known as False Inhaling, which allowed him to seem to be smoking the same joint as his intended victim, thus lulling Doc into thinking this number was okay when in fact it was full of enough PCP to know over an elephant, which had no doubt been Parke-Davis's original idea when inventing it."

Now, here's a quotation from "Bunny Munroe" (Warning, prudes: graphic content):

"Bunny checks his watch, considers it, but cruises on. He sees a weird, veiled chick in a bikini with a Victorian bustle and then waves at a cute little junkie who looks a lot like Avril Lavigne (same black eyeliner), sitting on a pile of Big Issues in the doorway of the crumbling Embassy apartments. She stands and shuffles towards him, skeletal, with giant teeth and black, panda-like rings under her eyes, and then Bunny realises she is not a junkie chick at all but a famous supermodel at the peak of her success whose name he can't remember, which makes Bunny's hard-on leap in his briefs, and then on closer inspection he realises that she is a junkie chick after all and Bunny cruises on, even though everybody who is into this kind of thing knows, more than anything in the world, that junkie give the best head (crack whores, the worst)."

Anyway, Cave's story of an immoral, horny door-to-door salesman and his brilliant son is entertaining as hell, even if it is sort of like an especially lengthy episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia!"

This does make me want to read Cave's other novel, though.

There is a fine line between loveable asshole and just asshole and this character was nowhere near that line.