It finally hit the shelves, Nick Cave’s new novel ‘The Death of Bunny Munro’. The timing is spot on, grey skies ahead and gold in the leaves ripening. Why not celebrate the advent of fall with a dark tale? Enter drugs, lewdness, samples of skin moisturizer, death. I’m in the middle of it, savouring every dirty word. The jokes are priceless, but don’t be fooled. That is just Cave’s little trick to get your guard down, before he delivers his next grim blow.
In many ways, his latest brood reminds me of that other autumnal favourite: ‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt. Ah, if I could erase one book from my memory, just to get that maiden read back, this would be it. The plot revolves around the murder of one Edmund ‘Bunny’ Corcoran by the hands of his fellow Classics students. Thrilling enough in itself, what really sets it apart is the setting: a campus in the woods of Vermont, six choice students and their solitary mentor. Old money, blackmail, stupor, betrayal and remorse. Eros and Thanatos, as the Greeks call it. The cunt and the coffin, as Bunny Munro might put it.
Tartt is academic and Cave vulgar, but they both pull off the same stunt: announcing the death of their Bunny before you even met him. Making you care for him. Describing his world in absurd detail, making it seem even stranger than the deranged outcast protagonists. In other words: Stay inside. Read a book. That’s what autumns are for.
More soon!
I found the drawing of Cave on http://monaux.com/work/nick-cave/.
Tartt's was on http://woldhek.nl/images/drawings/1097-donna-tartt.jpg
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