Reviews with content warning for Torture - Bunny

wow. just wow. this is the first mona awad novel i’ve read and i was not disappointed. it’s gory and absurd and downright disturbing. i loved it. i never had any clue what was going to happen next, and i was always pleasantly surprised at what she had in store. there was so much symbolism and so many metaphors and i’m sure i didn’t even catch them all. the characters were so full-fledged and yet so empty? since we were seeing everyone and everything through samantha’s eyes, there was this veil of blissful ignorance draped over everything. i would have loved to get a peek into what the bunnies saw.

Spoiler

my favorite part of the whole book has to be max’s whole “performance piece” with the bunnies in the cave. watching their perfect, carefully curated, fake identities collapse was so satisfying and mildly humorous.

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emjbarnes's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Bunny's narrative carries you along effortlessly, blending realities at every turn. The dialogue is used really effectively to distinguish

Spoiler

(and intertwine)

characters' voices. Mona Awad's writing is beautiful and somehow immersive and disorienting at the same time.

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meleah_neely's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This book, much like the other reviews will tell you, was not at all what I expected going into it. While it is often described as The Secret History meets Heathers, I argue that it comes off more as a critique of the academia as told through a cynical Patrick Bateman (meshing that with the gritty humor and gore, you get a tale that's funny, weird, a little horrific, and leaves you in a liminal space of "huh?" when you finish reading it). For this, some might enjoy it while others will hate it. For me, I think it's a good read, but certainly, not one that you should try to make sense of on your own. It was not until seeing other reviews on Reddit and Quora that I truly believe I figured out where I stood with this story, and I recommend that others do the same thing upon reading the book. The one thing I will say is that I wish the ending went a bit slower— for a text that aimed to focus so clearly on the Body and Body horror especially, I wish the execution examined this a bit more.

Now, for those who have read the book and want my opinion (aka spoilers), here's what I made of it:

Spoiler

I thought that this text served more as a metaphor for the writing process than anything else. Some people believe that this is meant to be a story of a schizophrenic woman attempting to find out her place in the world— and ultimately doing that through writing. While I think this assumption is feasible, I find this interpretation to leave out the role of academia in the text. And frankly, if this were to be the point of the text, I would not like this book (instead of making a meaningful piece that critiques the lack of disability justice in academia, you turn mental illness into horror? boo!!!). One of the most impactful aspects of this story, when I read it, was how Sam speaks so candidly about the death of her passions in academia, her struggles to write unless she is with Ava (a project that ultimately serves to remind her of her drive and capabilities to create something she loves), and her loneliness as she navigates what truly makes a writer when with the rich white friend group who, no matter how much they try, cannot do what Sam can do (made most clear on both the night she led Workshop and their desires, jealousy, and fury when faced with Max (another creature that, though so much darker than Ava, is still an original piece of work that they can never recreate)). In the end, I think this text serves as a metaphor for the harshness of the creative writing process and how fine the line really is between creative genius and pure madness. I think that this is what made the text so nice for me, even if when I first read it I wouldn't have been able to put these thoughts together. I certainly want to reread it with more annotation to see if this belief I have still holds, since my brain was not as active as it should have been when reading this. Hence, why I believe it's something like an American Psycho instead of a Heathers.

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madeleinem13's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This was an interesting book and at first I was ready to give up and then it got really good. Then it kind of felt meh again, and then the ending went back to really good. I really liked the message and how thought provoking this book was. There are a lot of things left unanswered like certain symbols and meanings, but maybe I just didn’t catch onto them I don’t know.

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feenix's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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racbuckallew's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Updating my review to 4 stars—I was too hard on this one. It was—strange. Simultaneously cliche and unlike anything I have ever read before. There is a very specific niche of people I would recommend this book to, but I would definitely recommend it to them. Not really sure what I just read, though.

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