A review by rheasdaydream
Bunny by Mona Awad

dark funny mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

I write my first thoughts on this novel while looking at my stack of campus novels, out of which Bunny, with its hot and neon electric pink cover, immediately stands out. Others, bound in hues of black, packaged with the promise of delivering dark academia, help it stand out. Bunny, a hyper-feminine tale of a protagonist in an all-girls cohort at Writing School deserves just the treatment. It deserves to have a facade, to be distinguished from its more masculine peers, to be made to look unlike and feel hypnotising. But upon completion, it has the resounding sentiments of its masculine peers. It is indeed a satire on academia, of its unrelenting demands from students, the general surface-level pretentiousness, the social class in action, and the feelings of isolation that it can exacerbate in a person. However, in this tale, there are no attempts to aggrandise the various sybarite personalities of the people in and outside the cohort or pedagogy. It leaves no room for the reader to romanticise the experience in any way as the other campus novels do. In this way, Awad begins a genre of her own, a neon-pink academia of sorts, so bright and blinding that it cannot feed the fancies of pedantic connoisseurs of campus novels. It is so current in its setting and characters that it leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. There is much exploration of reality and fiction, with magic and imagination, laced with the terror of hyper-femininity. And this is a good thing because in the past, even when the Tartts and Rios of the world have sought to write an acerbic account of passion in academia, their love for classics and Shakespeare respectively has sent mixed signals to the readers. While their tales have been nuanced and complicated, they do little to deliver any real and resounding message. Awad, on the other hand, cleverly presents to us a tale both interesting and resonant with satire on pretentious intellectuals and class problems. The conclusion to Bunny is enjoyable because there is much room for people to take what they need from it. With the boom in the publication of campus novels, I would be interested to see what more can be made of it.