The Death of Bunny Munro is the second novel by Nick Cave. It is out this month on Canongate. This is the book review by Kendah El-Ali

There’s nothing better than meeting a person who initially strikes you as the survivor of a partial lobotomy, but upon further inspection proves to sideswipe you with his cunning intelligence, wicked sense of humor and agile grip on reality. Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro is such an encounter. Initially a seeming casualty of its stumbling prose and general inability to reach its own pretentious expectations, once the story gains momentum you literally cannot put it down. And you quickly realize you have been cleverly seduced into a headlock carefully woven from everyday repulse and hilarity, pain, love and horror…

Make the jump to continue reading our review. We’ve also included a few more vids of Cave reading from various other chapters.

Let’s face it, being consumed with thoughts of banging Kylie Minogue is pretty much par for the course. Who hasn’t wanted to at some point in the past 20 years? Calling Avril Lavigne “the Valhalla of vagina”, however, is the work of a fucking genius. There always was something about that eyeliner…

Enter the tale of Bunny Munro—cocksman, salesman and in the end a deadman—a sad nympho of a clown who roofies himself when he finds his wife hanging dead in their bedroom. Face-down in the loins and “arseholes” of countless women and prostitutes, Bunny’s staggering lack of life direction is set against the chronically eye-infected, “flip-flop” happenings of his son, Bunny Junior. Bunny Boy can rattle off the capital of any country: “The capital of Mongolia is Ulaanbaatar!”

The two hit the road upon realizing home only yields crushed Cocoa Puffs underfoot and the orange-nightgowned hauntings of Libby Munro, leaving Bunny Junior waiting in the family’s yellow car while his father sells cosmetics to the cunts he inevitably inserts himself in (one of which is an unconscious junkie). It’s an uneasy tale of father and son that draws to epic proportions, pitting humanity and the gods against one another on a dizzied trip down a road of life that ultimately lead nowhere.

But it’s not all the boyish games of a scared man on the run who has less than no business caring for his sensitive son. Cave—as he does—flips a coin in the air rather deliberately, forcing the reader think long and hard about the duality of life as it spins in an out of control—heads or tails, or a pile of cocaine. Though Bunny is testosterone and id run pathetically out of control, there is much more than meets the eye—or the “random vagina,” one should say.

And though the book may be fiction, it’s clear that everything from Kylie and the drugs, a vehement hatred for seagulls, a person with chronic eye infections and a dead father in a car crash are rooted in facts about Cave’s personal history.

That very humanity gives the book its underlying power. You can almost grip the honesty that pours through the fanfare. Though it’s too easy to get wrapped up in all the booze, Bratz dolls and booty, it’s not to say that’s what it’s really about. After all, Cave has always had a particularly keen grip on cinematic drama. Though his words at times go nowhere, he has a peerless ability to paint a picture with any and everything that isn’t a paintbrush: music, screenplay, storyline or beyond. And sometimes, all the pretty pictures are just for play.

When listening to Bunny’s “Spinning Around” Kylie mobile ringtone, in a pure manner Junior’s undying love and support for his father validates his very existence:

The boy watches his father cross the road and thinks there is something about the way his dad moves through the world that is truly impressive. Cars screech to a halt, drivers shake their fists and stick their heads out the windows and curse and blow their horns and Bunny walks on as if radiating some super-human force field, like he has walked off the pages of a comic book. The worlds can’t touch him. He seems to be the grand generator of some hyper powerful electricity.

Cave himself is a generator of a certain electricity, whatever the Devil may have had to do with it. Birthing two sons on two different continents within months of one another (Jethro is now a known model) is no easy feat. Most men do not kiss Blixa Bargeld on stage and turn women on in the process. There’s no sense getting into all the drugs. The mix of madness and purity spiked with roaring humor are a part of his life’s elixir, take the sexuality for what you will. In the end, it’s probably all just a bit of a sick laugh:

Poodle told Bunny only recently of a local pussy-hound from Portslade who went from stud to dud after attending a Celine Dion concert. He just couldn’t get it up any more. He told Poodle it was like trying to stuff a dead canary in a cash dispenser.

And God forbid Cave ever loses his game.

Purchase a copy of the book here.

The Death of Bunny Munro: Chapter 10

The Death Of Bunny Munro: Chapter 12

The Death of Bunny Munro: Chapter 17