“Just say it. Tell me what happened. Tell me what the fuck this means,” screamed by one of the characters in Bunny during a moment of rage, this is precisely the reaction I had when I finished the book. I turned to the next page thinking, surely, there had to be more. Yet, there was nothing.  I was frantic, confused, but also pleasantly amused. The novel doesn’t make things easy for the reader. Rather, it takes them by the hand, and plunges them deep down the bunny-hole into a world unlike anything else.

After finishing the novel, I had to take a moment to myself, and accept the fact that if I were to ever read the word ‘bunny’ again, I would be at serious risk for a violent implosion—blood, guts, and all. Make no mistake, there is more gore, blood, and horror in this story than one would expect from a book whose title references tiny, cute, furry animals. As one reader pointed out, the word bunny appears somewhere around 300 times in the text. That’s a lot of bunnies. But, perhaps that is precisely one of the points Awad is making. In the same witty, sharp, dark humour that marked her 2016 debut, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Awad draws readers into a world made of equal parts macabre and mini-sized French macaroons. 

Samantha is a student at Warren’s prestigious, creative writing, graduate program where she finds herself an outsider amongst the only other members of her cohort: four women who appear to be some perverse amalgamation and would-be lovechild of Veronica Sawyer and Regina George. Mix in the pretentiousness and elitism found in MFA programs, and you get the Bunnies— “we call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously, Bunny.” Samantha is noticeably not part of this clique, and hangs out by the fringes with her best friend Ava, a cynical punk who sees through Warren’s nonsense, and perhaps, the novel’s most redeemable character. Unfortunately, readers don’t see much more of Ava. After getting invited to the Bunnies “Smut Salon”— an exclusive, top-secret hangout— Samantha’s insecurities are brought to light as she quickly abandons Ava and begins her descent into Bunny hell.  Samantha soon joins their feverishly, cultish group and becomes a Bunny herself. 

Awad describes Samantha’s transformation in a way that any young woman who has experienced the desire to fit in would understand. The novel’s strength lies in the way it creates this paradoxical space for both female empowerment and female cruelty. There is something equally terrifying and envious about a tight-knit group of girls who spend their days braiding each other’s hair and drinking rosé, while discussing the merits of third-wave feminism. Awad captures the seething atmosphere of the Bunnies’ relentless hunt for a story, whatever the cost. In one of their first interactions, the Bunnies gang up on Samantha; their desire to rip her open in search of secrets to spill forming a drool on their perfectly pink lips. “They look at me like they know I have a burning slutty secret I am willfully withholding. Like I’m denying them entry into my whorish vagina and it’s a real problem.” Unable to resist their inquisitions, Samantha conjures up a story that will satisfy their hunger, a story that ends with a bang, literally. 

 Awad masterfully recreates the intoxication and toxicity that defines some female friendships. She describes their texting as if it were a poisonous contagion: “I watched it grow and grow—their all-caps sentences, their millions of exclamations points, their plague of winks and smiles— like a malevolent vine strangling me.” Yet, it is exactly this vine that Samantha chooses to straddle as she plunges deeper and deeper into the dark and sinister world of the Bunnies. Beneath the frilly facades, the Bunnies have created their own type of writing “workshop”; one complete with exploding heads, the occult, black magic, boys, and yes, plenty of bunnies. 

Awad creates a satirical world which highlights the ludicrous nature of writing programs and the writing process itself. A graduate of Brown University’s MFA program, Awad speaks from a place of personal experience. In a world where it seems there is nothing original left to say, Awad captures the pressures writers feel to create something “innovative”, “experimental”, “performance based”, and “intertextual”. It is exactly this desire that drives the Bunnies to create their own type of writing workshop that seeks to transgress traditional writing projects. Enter drugs, witchcraft, the occult, and you have the perfect recipe for the obscure, innovative projects that schools like Warren crave. “Samantha, we’re at Warren. The most experimental, groundbreaking writing school in the country. This goes way beyond genre. It subverts the whole concept of genre.” 

Subverting genre is precisely what Awad does throughout the novel. From satire, parody, magical-realism and horror, Bunny is a novel that refuses to be defined or contained by any neat categorization. The effect can be disorientating at times, and the plot sometimes feels overwhelming and underdeveloped. With so much going on, it’s easy to get lost along the way. I paused multiple times and went back to reread paragraphs. Yet, in the end, I still felt I somehow missed a lot.  There are characters, such as Samantha’s thesis supervisor dubbed “the Lion,” who is referenced throughout as having had some sexual and inappropriate relationship with Samantha, yet what exactly conspired is never revealed—despite Samantha clearly being plagued by his presence and their interactions. It seems like a forced commentary on the stereotypical female and male-professor affair; one that is never brought to full fruition. Likewise, Ava’s presence is sparse, and her character never fully develops beyond serving as a foil to the Bunnies and to Warren’s snobby elitism. In fact, her fate can be compared to that of Barb from “Stranger Things,” a sheer injustice. 

Nonetheless, as Samantha’s writing teacher tells her, “disorientation can be a very interesting space to occupy as a writer. You should try it as an exercise over the holidays. It can be quite illuminating for you, I think.”