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by Boomert - Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave 07 Jan 2010
In 1989 Melbourne-born musician, Nick Cave, released his debut novel And the Ass Saw the Angel--a lyrically dense (and some would suggest impenetrable) book, steeped in biblical imagery, violence and wry humour. Twenty years later the much anticipated second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, is a very different beast altogether. While still bearing the usual Cave hallmarks--the dark wit, lyricism and violence--The Death of Bunny Munro is a bawdy romp of a novel. If Dante had ever written a ‘Carry On’ film it may have turned out something like The Death of Bunny Munro. Bunny Munro is a self-styled ladies’ man with a wife and a nine-yearold son, Bunny Junior. Narcissistic and swelling with hubris and lustful desires, Bunny Munro sells beauty products from door-to-door on the south coast of England and sets out to seduce lonely housewives-- and pretty much every woman he meets--along the way. On the death of his wife he is set adrift and hits the road, hawking his wares for one final time with Bunny Junior in the passenger seat. As is evident from his songs, his earlier (and now this) novel, Cave has skilfully mastered the wry humour and grotesquery of the grand guignol. There is much to find repulsive in the character of Bunny Munro--and many of the characters in this book--as he descends into his own libidinous hell and to his inevitable end. Foreboding, trepidation and the reader’s sympathies accompany him, and Bunny Junior, to the last page. In the quiffed Bunny Munro (rarely in literature has one lock of hair possessed such personality), Cave has created a compelling character. The world Nick Cave paints isn’t pretty yet there is such beauty to be found in it--in the humour and pain and the hope, in his storms and his losers, in his lyricism and prose. While the Kylie Minogue and Avril Lavigne fixation in the novel, at times, wears a little thin, Cave’s masterful and poetic command of language and his wry observations makes this a delight to read, as do the many laugh-out-loud moments in this otherwise dark tale. Nick Cave fans have been waiting a long time for this second novel. They, no doubt, will not be disappointed.

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine (March 2009, Vol 88, No 6.) is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2009, Thorpe-Bowker.

Author Biography: Nick Cave
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