"Bunny" by Mona Awad (2019)

 

Surreal, absurd, satirical, and not in the least entertaining. It's a trap book that everyone cheered for and appraised which prompted me to give it a try and see what's what. 

I wish I hadn't.

On second thought...

I'm glad I had.

But then again...

It's not even worth considering.

All I can say is it was a love-hate relationship, or perhaps, a mildly tolerant-hate relationship. Sometimes I wanted to gut the book and set it on fire. Sometimes I thought it was onto something of some worth. But mostly, I wanted to just use it as toilet paper. 

There are two layers to the story: the literal and the metaphorical. Literally, it's about self-conscious, passive-aggressive, deeply troubled Samantha who is a grad student in an avante-garde school called Warren for creative writing. She's the black duck of her girl cohort in an MFT program as she tries so hard—but doesn't admit it—to fit in with a bunch of 'mean girls' who are in some sort of a cult, who are waaaay over the top with their girly attachment to each other, cooing and hugging and eating everything tiny and cute. The cult is sort of like A-ha's take on me as the girls turn bunnies into human boys which symbolizes writing drafts.

Metaphorically, however, Bunny is about the process of creative writing while being self-aware and self-critical of one's work. In essence, Bunny is about a real-life writer writing about writing whereas a grad student writer is having a block and writing about writing.

The premise sounds promising but the execution didn't catch up to it. Many things stood in the way. Throughout the book, Awad was trying—let me add—too hard to slough off the vernacular of nowadays prose, the overused cliches, the exhausted molds of dialogue dynamics, of plot progression, and came up with expressions that were unique and creative, but, sadly, they came out weird, awkward, and ill-fitting. I know. I know. This might be an exaggeration on my part... not as exaggerated as Awad's attempt at the avant-garde and completely going off the rails. For example, "She is cherry blossoms falling. She is serious moonlight. She is shivering green leaves." Seriously! Who writes like that?! The reading experience wasn't fun; it felt like reading the scribbles of a toddler. My cringe spectrum was maxed out in this book, it made me feel like a spider curling up. And the abusive use of similes was just on another level.

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Summary:

Apparently, this isn't my cuppa tea, but it might be for others. I realized I was not the target audience. That's why it didn't click on me. If you're up for a millennial, washed-down version of Chuck Palahniuk's style on drugs, then, sure, go for it.