Hi there! My name is Ani and this is Reader’s Report, where I review a book that I’ve read recently and explain exactly how I feel about it to you lovely people.
This week’s book is kind of a crazy one, it felt like a fever dream when I read it and even now, I can’t tell you exactly what happened, I just know it was insane.
“Bunny” by Mona Awad is a girl-power, drug-induced, rich-girl-at-indie-college fantasy and really pushes the boundaries of what literature is about. Can you write about insane women AND think critically about what it means to be a woman in society? Mona Awad says absolutely!
First let me debrief about Mona Awad and her wonderful yet crazy writing style. She has a notorious streak of writing books that question the sanity and sanctity of women in today’s society. Although I’ve only read this particular book by her, I’ve read enough reviews (on TikTok, a completely valid source if you ask me) to get a good idea of what she’s about. To break it down, in all the books she writes, she is able to challenge some aspect of societal standards while also bending every sense of reality that exists.
In “Bunny”, she focuses on a girl named Samantha, who is a part of a very selective English MFA program at a liberal arts college in New England. Think Cornell, but for people who study English and are even further into the woods. She has a total of one (yes, one) friend at this entire institution and they spend their days writing and making fun of these girls who are weird as hell. These girls call each other ‘Bunny’ and never use each others’ real names. The weirdest part is that they all act as though they are the same person and have zero personality other than the fact that they’re in their little group. They literally refer to themselves as a collective ‘we’. So like any sane person, Samantha says that she’ll NEVER be friends with them.
In a shocking turn of events: she ends up becoming friends with them.
The rest of the book essentially follows her downward spiral into this friend group as she throws away all her morals for the sake of having a friend group that she feels a part of. I’m not going to lie, at the beginning you have no idea where this plot is going. I sat there asking myself what was going on for the first half of the book and then once you get halfway through, you realize that the entire book is just this crazy metaphor about girlhood and this feminine urge to belong somewhere.
In the beginning of the book, Samantha really struggles with figuring out what she wants to accomplish at this school. When she’s invited to one of the Bunnies’ get-togethers (and get-together is an understatement), she only goes for the plot. She wants inspiration. Also because she’s nosy and wants to know what they do at these hang-outs. And then she keeps attending these hangouts, because why not? They seem nice enough right? Might as well make more friends in her writing class?
Yeah, well this is where it gets weirder. The Bunnies have these rituals that they do. And when I say rituals, I do not mean fun little traditions like, ‘omg, let’s do a song every time we meet’. I mean ‘sacrificial animal’ type of ritual. I mean ‘this isn’t a friend group, this is a cult’ type of ritual.
As the book continues, Samantha falls into this dream-like state, comparable to Alice when she falls into Wonderland. She gets so dragged into this world that even the reader is confused with what’s going on and whether or not it’s real or fake or in her head or in a drug-induced dream, etc. It just keeps getting worse for this girl.
Personally, I’d say it’s basically “The Secret History” if you had Donna Tart listen exclusively to Lana del Rey while writing it and if she got bored of writing character studies for the first two hundred pages.
So do I think you should read it? Yeah, why not! I mean it’s not like you’ll ever be hanging out doing drugs at three am in the middle of the woods at a Top 100 liberal arts college with weirdly selective masters programs. Right, guys? Right?
Well anyway, I’ll see you next time.
