Book Review: Bunny - Mona Awad

Praise
Bunny is a novel that has received much praise. Even the famous writer, Margaret Atwood, gave this book a few compliments even stating that she is an “admirer” of Bunny. This novel is internationally acclaimed. My review speculates on different aspects and tries to reason with the choices Awad made in the novel.

There will be a part where there will be a big spoiler, but I will give a warning beforehand. Otherwise, I will try my best not to give any spoilers. I suggest you read this post at another time if you want to have an original experience of Bunny.

Summary and context
The story is about a student called Samantha in a fiction-writing cohort. Her peers include a group of girls that are the typical pink clique, but with a strange tie that makes them seem like one creature. The call themselves the Bunnies and try to reel Samantha into their circle. They have their nights called the “Smut Salon” and they invite Samantha to join. At first Samantha stays true to herself and her friend Ava, but later Samantha joins them and changes into a pink clique member herself.

Main Character
Samantha is a static character that is why I think she is blunt. Her character could have been great if she was a bit more dynamic, but there is nothing really changing. For example, the bunnies said that Samantha thought she was better than them. I really rooted for her character to develop in any way to change this truth but in the end she still thought better of herself and looked down upon them. You would think I hated the fact that the bunnies were right but instead I agreed with them and it fueled my dislike toward Samantha’s character.

Samantha does not have a strong character. She bases her personality on the people that surround her. At first it is her friend and then it is the bunnies. I must say that in the third part she goes back to her normal self, but unfortunately this normal is the generic “different girl” you may find on Wattpad.

I am also not very fond of her character because of her envy. It is as if she thinks that the world is againts her and life cannot stop kicking her. There are various instances where she describes different settings. In these cases it is envious jealousy devouring the descriptions of these settings. If Awad wrote Samantha intentionally dislikeable, she had done an astonishing job. It might be genius to show this character trait through something like the description of a setting. I must give Awad credit for this unique way of illuminating a character trait.

All these aspects make the character a bit too much like the cliché of an outcast facing the mean girls. Her character and “character development”, if you can call it that, are similar to Cady from the movie Mean Girls (2004). I suspect it may be intentional, but something about this bothers me. As I said, for me, it leans too much towards a clichè.

But
WARNING
This part of the post will contain spoilers.

Samantha may have been written intentionally like this for the twist at the end. This twist being that she has schizophrenia. In the novel it seems like magic realism at play, but in the end the twist reinforces the suspicion that she may suffer from schizophrenia.

Throughout the novel you can pick up some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, for example her disorientation when she could not find her apartment which she had been living in for quite a while. Another example, is her loss of interest in her love for writing. When you are reading the novel these seem like insignificant events, but with the twist revealing the possible schizophrenia it makes everything that happened much stronger and relevant. It shows Awad’s meticulous composition of this novel and her eye for detail.

Another clue in the novel about Samantha’s schizophrenia is the reminder of her dark imagination that echoes throughout the novel. This detail cracks the window of magic realism because it introduces the possibility of everything being Samantha’s imagination. But, things are made difficult by the task of finding out to what extent Samantha’s imagination stretches.

Even though her character is disagreeable, it may all be part of the overall construction of the novel. I will give the construction of Samantha’s character the benefit of the doubt. She may be a generic and static character because too much unique elements may have distracted the reader and caused the twist to not hit as hard as it did.

(Spoiler end)

Something else
Another thing I picked up, which I think may add to Samantha’s imagination, is her the comparison she draws between people around her and animals. The pink clique is perceived as bunnies, her friend as a swan, and a mentor as a lion. I find this quite interesting and I am not sure if I am missing something. But, I will see if I can find something about it somewhere.

Conclusion
This review was a bit all over the place. I cannot decide if this book is a perfect novel or if it is lacking in some elements. I have to say I am leaning more to the positive side, though.

This is a layered novel and I think there will be broadly contrasted opinions. All I can say, with confidence that is, is that you should pick the novel up for yourself and decide where your opinion lies on the scale. Let the enigma unfold, even when you have finished Bunny.

Thank you for taking the time to read my review. I apologize for the undecided conclusion, but maybe it can convince you to read it for yourself. That would anyway be the best conclusion. Thank you again!

(The photographs were taken either with @fermentedphil’s Nikon D300 or my iPhone. This post is my own creation with my opinions)