Nick Cave has created one of the most sorrowfully pathetic,
misogynistic jerks to ever grace the printed page, and that takes
talent. Philandering beauty product salesman Bunny Munro would make
Martin Amis proud, with his chronic masturbation and obsession with
Avril Lavigne’s vagina. Boozing, sexing and all coked-up, Bunny is
caught off guard by his wife’s suicide, leaving him alone for the first
time with his young son, Bunny Jr., who, for some reason, still
idol-worships his pops. The two set off on an ill-fated road trip, with
some horrifying turns along the way. Thankfully there is humour in the
duo’s ignorance: Bunny’s blind belief that all female fast-food workers
are under his spell, and Bunny Jr.’s eagerness to please his insane
dad. Vividly written, but occasionally over-told—perhaps an
over-compensation moving from lyric to long-form—the novel’s only
downfall is Cave’s stereotypical American culture, which seems to come
from Fox Television and Cormac McCarthy novels. He’s created a land of
rednecks, desperate women in tight Juicy yoga pants and dusty suburbs
filled with “groups of scissor-legged school-things with their pierced
midriffs.”
This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2009.