Run Rabbit, Run Rabbit, Run Run Run

Reviewing Bunny by Mona Awad

Serendipity is an overused word but also sometimes it just happens. A close friend recommended a song - Run Rabbit - by ALT BLK ERA, and I listened on the exact commute I finished this book on.

Bunny by Mona Awad was everywhere a few years ago. I remember it being called shocking, a gamechanger in the genre, and a breath of fresh air. Margaret Atwood called the writer her spiritual successor or something like that.

I agree with the critics.

Let’s start with a synopsis, even though the book is profoundly weird, so you shouldn’t go by this:

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and seem to move and speak as one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled Smut Salon, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies' sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus Workshop where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

There’s an element of you had to be there that reminded me of A Secret History, so I get it when people criticise the book for its pretentiousness or try-hard vibes. Yes, the main character is a little too I’m-not-like-other girls. Yes, that’s the point.

The book is Alice in Wonderland meets dark academia, featuring drugs, alienation, clas priviledge, and examination of self. I had absolutely no idea what was real, what was a dream, and where the plot would go next.

I make a face when I think about this book. I think that face is confusion - I feel deeply dissatisfied, I want SO MUCH MORE - but also I want you to read this book, dear readeer. Trust me. You might want to run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run run run… or you might want to end up on reddit for half the night reading about fan theories. I know which one I did.

Overall Rating: 9/10

Book Cover Rating: 4/10 (I like the pink and black, it’s striking, but I’d have leant into the whole mad hatteryness of this to be honest. Or at least have featured a decapitated head.)

Bonus Album Rating: 9/10 (not that anyone asked).