The Death of Bunny Munro by Nick Cave

From the Publisher

Set adrift by his wife’s suicide and struggling to keep a grip on reality, Bunny Munro does the only thing he can think of: with his young son in tow, he hits the road. To his son, waiting patiently in the car while his father peddles beauty wares and quickies to lonely housewives in the south of England, Bunny is a hero, larger than life. But Bunny himself, haunted by what might be his wife’s ghost, seems only dimly aware of his son’s existence.

When his bizarre trip shades into a final reckoning, when he can no longer be sure what is real and what is not, Bunny finally begins to recognize the love he feels for his son. And he sees that the revenants of his world—decrepit fathers, vengeful ghosts, jealous husbands and horned psychokillers—are lurking in the shadows, waiting to exact their toll.

At turns dark and humane, The Death of Bunny Munro is a tender portrait of the relationship between a boy and his father, with all the wit and enigma that fans will recognize as Nick Cave’s singular vision.

Publishers Weekly

The protagonist of Cave's pleasantly demented second novel, set in England, is living out a porno: door-to-door lotion salesman Bunny Munro spends his days seducing invariably attractive women, servicing both their sexual and moisturizing needs. His wife's suicide, though, threatens to derail Bunny's amorous adventures, as he can't shake the feeling that he might somehow be responsible. Another new obstacle is the need to look after his nine-year-old son, Bunny Jr. In an effort to escape the creepiness of the apartment he shared with his wife, Bunny takes his son on the road, teaching him the ropes of salesmanship. Meanwhile, a man in red face paint and plastic devil horns accosts women in northern England before a murderous turn sends him journeying south. Bunny's deterioration from swaggering Lothario to sputtering pity case suggests he is carrying around more guilt than he cares to admit, and his obsessive behavior, while a bit of a stretch, allows for an interesting portrait of modern family dynamics. Cave's bawdy humor, along with a gallows whimsy that will be familiar to fans of his music, elevate the novel from what might otherwise be a one-note adventure. (Sept.)

Library Journal

After a joyous ride from woman to woman, Bunny Munro, a sex-obsessed beauty product salesman, meets his comeuppance when he is fatally injured in a traffic accident. Not until his dying moments does he feel remorse over taking sexual advantage of his female customers and neglecting his nine-year-old son. However, the penitence comes only after many chapters of sexual gratification and coarse language, and one wonders if he is indeed sincere or if the author is merely seeking absolution for his own self-indulgence and bawdiness. Australian rock star Cave, moonlighting as a novelist, has an ear for the rhythm of language, employing dialog that appropriately reflects individual walks of life. But as the story, with little variation, follows Bunny door to door as he flirts with women and occasionally enjoying a "quickie," it soon becomes repetitious and tedious. VERDICT Cave's previous novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel, has been hailed as "adventurous," but this work, laced with infantile wit, frankly goes nowhere. Reading like a graphic novel without illustrations, it may appeal to readers with a predilection for weird humor. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/09.]—Victor Or, Surrey P.L. & North Vancouver City Lib., B.C.

Kirkus Reviews

After a two-decade pause, the post-punk singer-songwriter finally follows up his well-received first novel (And The Ass Saw The Angel, 1990) with a lurid fantasia about a drug-addled salesman. This could easily be the literary companion to Cave's recent howling performances with garage band Grinderman. When we meet long-since-gone-to-seed Bunny Munro, he's shacked up with the latest prostitute, multitasking by phoning to comfort his mentally disturbed wife Libby. A sex-obsessed peddler of beauty products, Bunny numbs himself by limiting his input to the next selfish pleasure. Returning home, he finds Libby has slashed all his clothing and hung herself in a locked bathroom. Instead of comforting their nine-year-old son Bunny Junior, the once-charming lothario fills himself with poisons, packs his bonnet full of inventory and hits the road with his son for a series of misguided lessons about manhood. Bunny's melancholy worldview takes some getting used to, but he's fitfully sly and unabashedly narcissistic, which also makes him unpredictably funny. Told he should be extinct, Bunny declares, "I resent that. I take personal hygiene very seriously." As the story develops, he achieves a broken grace that belies his repellent character and faintly hints at redemption. Things get weirder when Bunny starts seeing Libby. "He realizes, in a shadowy way, for a brief moment, that the imaginings and visitations and apparitions that he encountered were the ghosts of his own grief and that he was being driven insane by them," Cave writes in characteristically lyrical and macabre prose. "He knows more than he knows anything that they very soon will kill him."Profane and profound by turns-not for everyone,but Cave still knows how to command an audience.

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