Awad’s leap into the unreal, on the other hand, summons new life to the familiar woes of academia and art making. Scenes with the Bunnies and their horrific creations are more engaging than the novel’s moments of mundane life Samantha’s aloof mentor, “The Lion,” with whom she had an emotional-fling, and the nice poet boy who has a crush on her, present low stakes compared to the drama of the Bunny-boys and their butchers. The story only gets weirder, thriving in suspense and surreal confusion.īunny could’ve been a bitter account of a wounded MFA grad’s slights and gripes, but the surreal and supernatural turns make it more enjoyable, insightful, and honest than an anti-academia screed. She returns to their regularly scheduled school-sanctioned workshop, her failure the night before “as unspeakable as money or a fart.” The drama, however, is far from over, with half the book remaining.

Her brief stint with the Bunnies ends in disgrace. She’s spent the whole semester blocked, and this failure in front of her peers is catastrophic. When it’s Samantha’s turn to summon her own Bunny-boy, she fails. Sure, they’re turning bunnies into half-men, but the struggle, shame, and frustration of making art rings true. Dismayed by the Frankenstein Bunny-boy creations, Samantha muses, “If you never even touch hand flesh, let alone fuck? Isn’t that more of a Disney ride than a date?” The novel quickly ascends to a Heathers level of camp without losing its grip on emotional reality. Awad expertly balances the horror of the ritual with her acerbic humor. Their ritual is an engaging metaphor for the emotional investment artists place in their work and the brazen disregard of an artist working with blinders on. What does any writer do to a darling that doesn’t make the cut? Kill it. They are sexless drones that never satisfy their makers. The Bunny-boys lack human hands and self-awareness, repeating only the same senseless compliments. They insist on calling each other “Bunny.” The fifth, Samantha Heather Mackey, can’t stand the Bunnies, but she can’t say no when they invite her to their weekly “Smut Salon.” She imagines the meeting will be as insufferable as their stunted and self-congratulatory writing workshops, but at the Smut Salon, the Bunnies turn actual rabbits into men, which they call their Drafts. In Mona Awad’s new book, Bunny, the prestigious MFA Writing Program at Warren College has accepted its first all-women cohort, and four of the five students get along so well that it’s hard to tell them apart.

Bunny by mona awad review