Product Description

The Death of Bunny Munro recounts the last journey of a salesman in search of a soul. Following the suicide of his wife, Bunny, a door-to-door salesman and lothario, takes his son on a trip along the south coast of England. He is about to discover that his days are numbered. With a daring hellride of a plot The Death of Bunny Munro is also a modern morality tale of sorts, a stylish, furious, funny, truthful and tender account of one man's descent and judgement. The novel is full of the linguistic verve that has made Cave one of the world's most respected lyricists. It is his first novel since the publication of his critically acclaimed debut And the Ass Saw the Angel twenty years ago.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #318 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-03
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Review
A compulsive read possessing all Nick Cave's trademark horror and humanity. --Irvine Welsh

Review
Cave writes novels like he does lyrics, with strokes of blood and sulphur and lightning.

Review
Cocksman, Salesman, Deadman; Bunny Munro might not be Everyman, but every man ought to read this book.

Customer Reviews

Her Funeral, His Novel
The adventures of a loathsome lothario on the road with his son in the aftermath of his long-suffering wife's death, this is an amusing and horrific book in which the writer sifts through the sordid dregs of the male psyche to come up with some sort of apology to womankind. The disconnect between the main character's perception of events and what the reader can deduce as the reality is particulary well managed and hilarious/depressing. Overall though I would have to say that if I didn't know it was by the revered Dark Prince Nicholas Of Cave the novel would perhaps not really stand out. Like a good Chuck Palahniuk or a minor Bret Easton Ellis.

Bunnysaurus
The story of the end of Bunny Munro is a story about a dinosaur who has not realised that his species is extinct.

Bunny is really not a very nice person at all. It's not simply his antediluvian attitude towards women, but also his uncaring solipsism. Certainly, his son is caught in his orbit, but Bunny barely seems to notice him until towards the end. And, really, it's the ending that gives the book any meaning, and changes the bathos to pathos.

I don't know...it is well written, although some repeated phrases started to jar a little (the repetition of 'or something' after several metaphors). But I found it really hard to empathise with Bunny, to care in any way for this drunken lecher. After all, here is a man who, in the first few pages, drives his wife to suicide. Yet I plugged on with it and, when we meet Bunny's father, when we see Bunny Senior, Bunny and Bunny Junior, and we get some inkling of the motives of and background to Bunny's story, then maybe there is some sympathy. But the sympathy is for Bunny Junior; his father is clearly a lost cause.

In places, it reminded me of 'Bad Lieutenant'. Set in Brighton and the South Coast, the comparison still works, but the book is certainly no religious text, even given the hints of supernatural goings-on.

As a character study, it doesn't really have a great deal of depth. Bunny is simply thoroughly and pretty well two-dimensionally unpleasant. Bunny Junior is the only glimmer of light in this novel. In some ways, the Death of Bunny Munro may be the saving of Bunny Junior.

Still, it is a good read, but a bit disappointing overall. I'm not sure what I was hoping for, but if it hadn't been for Bunny's obsession with Kylie Minogue and Avril Lavinge, I'd have thought this was a 50s 'period piece'. As I said, Bunny is a dinosaur.

Sensationalism and vulgarity masquerading as art
Sometimes you just have to tell it like it is - somewhat disturbingly most other reviewers seemed to like this. I didn't and could happily wait for another 30 years if this is the best Nick Cave could come up with - he should stick to music.