"The Death of Bunny Munro"
by Nick Cave
Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nick-Death-Bunny-Munro-Hardcover/dp/B002W4GVIC/
Reading history and reviews
Finished on 14th July 2012
I don't know what to make of this ... singer Nick Cave's second novel, "The Death of Bunny Munro" is ostensibly the story of the final journey undertaken by the eponymous travelling salesman along with his 9 year-old son following his wife's suicide. Bunny seems to be obsessed by sex with any and all of the women he meets on his travels - described in graphic, often brutal and ultimately quite dispiriting detail - while simulatenously being haunted by memories of his dead wife (who seems to be haunting his son in more conventional fashion).
The setting on south-east coast of England, along with Bunny's name and profession, made this feel more like the 1950s or 1970s, and Bunny felt like an anachronism in modern times, and rather like (say) American Psycho I found myself wondering what it was all about: is this supposed to be simply brutal entertainment, or is it trying to say something deeper about the male psyche, or the modern world? This review from the Guardian seems to suggest that the book aspires to something more.