Bunny: TikTok made me buy it!

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This book is also fairly big on BookTok, and while most of my TikTok feed is made up of the most unhinged and inexplicable videos to exist in the universe since the end of Vine, I occasionally brush with literature (presumably due to my username being "emmareadstoomuch"). People on BookTok like to say very dumb things about this book, like "i liked most of it but it rlly lost its way at the end :/" and "bunny was like good but also it totally stopped making sense" as if endings are something authors just make up at the last minute and they have nothing to do with anything. What is the deal with the Bunnies? Why can they turn animals into humans? Why is Max holding a swan? If you didn’t read the book and just read my summary that covers more or less the content of the book, you’ll probably be confused. If you read the book, you may be less confused but still have some questions lingering. To save time, I didn’t write my summary – if you can call it that, it’s not very short – with explicit detail; I wrote it just to form an outline. The book itself left many clues or easter eggs, so forgive me if this analysis doesn’t make much sense when referring to the summary above.

Break the Haughty: Max does this to the Bunnies by pretending to be different idealized men to each of them and distancing them from each other. Before I continue, let me tell you about Max. He is another Draft; a hot, elusive man who would probably be the main love interest in a YA book. He dates Ava – may or may not be metaphorical incest? – and tells her of all the things that Samantha would never let cross her lips. Do you think that’s weird? Well, it’s not; Max and Samantha share the same thoughts. Want to know something that is bizarre? Max is actually conjured from a deer, not a bunny; this said deer was spotted outside one of the Bunnies’ house before the ritual started. So, Samantha is an overpowered main character who can turn other animals besides hares into humans. Bunny parodies the culture of an MFA program at an elite, coastal university, amplifying the jargon, camaraderie, posturing, and insularity of the institution to surreal and grotesque extremes. What details did you find especially effective or poignant in the satire? How do you think the characters’ creativity is shaped by the (both on- and off-campus) workshop environment? Did these characterizations resonate with any of your real-life experiences? Do you still have questions? If you haven’t figured it out, there’s one more twist: Samantha is schizophrenic. Coupled with her vivid imagination – which may be hallucinations – pathological lying, and how whenever the Bunnies feed her pills, her hallucination of Ava disappears – it all adds up. In chapter twenty-six, there was an old woman on the bus that recites all the symptoms of said disease, and at that point, Samantha already displays all of it. So, with this revelation, it's safe to say that she is an unreliable narrator. We Do Adjust Our Reality for Other People: An Interview with Mona Awad". Electric Literature. 2016-03-02 . Retrieved 2018-02-20.No punches pulled, no hilarities dodged, no meme unmangled. O Bunny you are sooo genius!' MARGARET ATWOOD Whatever response I offer—an earnest confession of my own imminent failure, a bald‐faced lie that sets my face aflame—will elicit the same knowing nod, the same world‐weary smile, a delivery of platitudes about the Process being elusive, the Work being a difficult mistress. Trust, Sasha. Patience, Sarah. Sometimes you have to walk away, Serena. Sometimes, Stephanie, you have to seize the bull by the horns. This will be followed by the recounting of a similar creative crisis/breakthrough they experienced while on a now‐defunct residency in remote Greece, Brittany, Estonia. During which I will nod and dig my fingernails into my upper‐arm flesh.

But maybe they’re actually trying to include me this year? Maybe this invitation is a gesture of kindness? Or it might be a joke. Of course it’s a joke. I picture a pair of small‐fingered hands folding the swan at a grand oak desk that looks out onto a view of canopied trees. A balmy grin biting on itself with small white teeth. The main thing that is particularly mind-blowing to me about the brilliancy of the author is how she connects the way the story plays out with the setting. Throughout the book, Mona Awad pokes fun at the disparity of Ivy League schools and the town they’re situated in; criticising the movement of academic superiority amongst others; making snide remarks on vague terms – Body, Process, and Work – academic teachers often use. She infuses her critique into her protagonist’s narrative; the unravelling of Samantha’s story is just the process of writing after all.One of her many series of pathological lying can be illustrated when she lied about having sex with Rob Valencia, the first bunny-man she saw that exploded – or did she? As you read the book, there are parts where it seems blurry – which I find impressive that Mona Awad managed to do seamlessly– and this could be correlated to when her dissociation is at its peak. it’s really fun and sharp and shivery, with a macabre fairy-tale overlay that gives it a unique spin on the coming-of-age tale. "coming-of-age" might seem misplaced, considering these are MFA students, but they read much younger than their actual age; not just the self-consciously girly-girl bunnies, but also in the themes samantha brings to the narrative; her awkwardness and loneliness and leftover-adolescent self-consciousness about fitting in; finding her place — for all of her ostensible disgust at the bunnies, their camaraderie is not without appeal for someone defined by loneliness and survival-mode embracing of their own otherness.

When Samantha arrives at one of the Bunnies’ home, she is welcomed by her own specially-made drink – that may or may not be drugged – and she is introduced to the enigmatic world of friendship and fluff. One thing leads to another, and Samantha finds herself lying about her sexual endeavours with her high school crush. How after they were in a play together, her crush – Rob Valencia – ravaged her; how she experienced her mind-body-spirit connection as she orgasmed. She kept out the part where Rob Valencia did not do those things and that she had a massive crush on him due to the fact he reads Dante’s Inferno by candlelight. Following the blood bath, a beautiful man emerges from the chaos. Odysseus, the man, is cultured- he enjoys Fellini and Proust; he is knowledgable in Erostisme and native in French. Then he opens his mouth and screams and gets beheaded with an ax. Don’t you just wish you can do this every time you’re on a commercial flight and that darn baby won’t stop crying? But don’t you worry about Odysseus, he is just a Draft; an intertextual space; a Darling; a Hybrid. Not a boy, the Bunnies are woke – genderism is so not Workshop-like. Everything's Better with Sparkles: The Bunnies cover Samantha in sparkles before they drug her at her first Smut Salon.Aspiritual cousin to Stephen King’s Carrie. . . Bunny is a kind of pastel-toned goth lit, an examination of what happens when ‘soft’ femininity meets the tougher kind—but one that also recognizes how blurry the distinction can be.”— TIME At the end of their first hangout, our narrator is overwhelmed with all the kindness and cries – solidifying an intimate relationship with the Bunnies. She even accidentally sleeps over, and as she sobers up from the one-too-many drinks she had from the previous night, she recalls a peculiar conversation.