The Death of Bunny Munroe ***

By Nick Cave.
Published by Faber & Faber Inc.
An affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Copyright 2009.
Originally published by Text Publishing Company, Australia.
278 pages.

This is Nick Cave's second novel. The last one he did, "And the Ass saw the Angel", was written over 20 years ago. For the unitiated, cave is foremost a musician, but he has also written film scores and has acted and written films also. One great film he wrote was the Australian western, "The Proposition".

The first thing that should be said and has to be said is this is no "And the Ass Saw The Angel". Comparisons have to be made. That book was epic, grand, biblical and a minor masterpiece. This book is much more personal and simpler and probably not as good.

It focuses on father and playboy Bunny Munroe. Bunny Munroe is a traveling salesman and a cocksman. He is so obsessed with sex that he really can't help himself, even though it's killing his marraige and he really does love his wife. In fact his wife is so unhappy, she commits suicide.

This leaves Bunny distraught and on a self-destructive bent, though one could argue that he was already self-destructive before the death of his wife. It also leaves him and his son haunted. They think that they can see her or can feel her presence. In Bunny, this haunting intensifies the guilt he feels. In his son, this haunting brings the boy comfort.

So he has his boy in tow, and he continues selling beauty products while leaving the boy in the car to wait out Bunny's encounters.

The title tells us that Bunny is to die in this book, so saying so is no spoiler. But it seems that Bunny is dying a little bit as the story continues. Like in Jim Jarmusch's film "Dead Man", he's dead even before he actually dies. It's the journey he takes towards his eviction from this mortal coil.

The death scene is particularly well written. In it, all the women he had ever known are gathered and SEEM to be on the verge of forgiving him... In this scene he takes a psychdelic trip to his end. I'm having trouble remembering the details as I had read this book about 2 weeks ago, but I do remember it being particularly moving.

In some ways I think the story is autobiographical. Cave has written many songs about love which have a slight yet clear eroticism in them. I can't help from feeling that many of thoughts that Bunny thinks are quite similar to Cave's way of thinking. That he's constantly thinking about sex. I mean we're talking about the guy who dated Kylie Minogue, who by the way is brought up in the book as a fantasy figure along with Avril Lavigne.

Also, he paints a portrait of a father and son relationship, and no matter how screwed up the father is, the son still loves and admires his father. Cave, leading the life of a rock musician, perhaps has some guilt towards his sons and their relationships. The son's admiration for his dad, is perhaps what Cave is wishing for in his own relationships.

This is the weirdest thing, a trailer for a book. Weird but here it is.



And here is an excerpt read by the man himself.