Thursday, November 05, 2009

The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave

My husband is a huge fan of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, so I surprised him by requesting a copy of The Death of Bunny Munro for him to review.
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Chick Lit this is not.

In the future, women describing the psyche of men will have a new cliché:’ “He's so Bunny Monro.”

Tragically, I myself fall into this category and believe that if left unchecked by spiritual grounding, some situational ethics and acceptable standards of morality, it would take little time for me to find myself thinking along Bunny Monro’s Cligulaian lines.

The Death of Bunny Monro is not a book designed for those who have a hard time looking at the side of themselves they would rather their mother did not know existed.

Bunny Monro is a door-to-door salesman for a product line marketed to women. His career path leads him to the doors of women of all walks of life and often Bunny uses the samples in his product case to massage his way further into the lives of customers and others he comes in contact with. Bunny is almost always bordering on a mindset kind people would simply call depraved.

That his wife kills herself is but one of the first insights readers get into realizing that the depravity of Bunny Monro is going to be paid for--first by those around him and as the title implies, ultimately Bunny Monro.

The introduction of Bunny’s young son, also Bunny Monro, and his sickly and equally perverse father, also Bunny Monro, had me wondering who would be the one who would die. Would it be the young boy, torn from his fathers callous but loving arms. Would it be the aged, sickly oafish prick of a father who would at last expire in a pool of excrement and spittle, while sitting in a chair whose compartments and between seat cushion spaces are filled with stratified food? Bunny Junior is weighted with the childhood responsibility of being the sane voice of reason in a world ruled by adults whose only claim to adultship is that they do not have to dress when someone else tells them to.

Many readers will relate to all aspects of the many manifestations presented and be pleased with the final outcome, as it appears to be just and true.

Women are presented in a variety of modes, sometimes even kindly, yet as a reviewer it is important to remind future readers that the worldview detailed by Bunny Monro is the exclusive domain of Bunny Monro, and the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons or maybe "the person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself." (Ezekiel 18:20)

1 comment:

bermudaonion said...

The cover makes me think the book would be rather silly, but I can see from your review that it's not. The book sounds really good, though.