'...and she said her name was Penny Charade... I kid you not. Penny Charade... I'll never forget it... and when I told her my name she laughed and I laughed and I knew that I had this power... this special thing that all the other bastards who were flopping around in the pool trying to impress the girls didn't have... I had this gift... a talent... and it was in that moment that I knew what I was put on this stupid planet to do...'
Bunny gropes around on the bed until he finds the remote and, with a crack of static, it implodes into nothingness and he closes his eyes. A great wall of darkness moves towards him. He can see it coming, vast and imperious. It is unconsciousness and it is sleep. It moves like a great tidal wave but before it breaks over him and he is away, before he renders himself completely to that oblivious sleep, he thinks, with a sudden, terrible, bottomless dread, of Avril Lavigne's vagina.
It is needless to say that I am a Nick Cave fan, but I've said it anyway. This blog's name (as well a my zine and ill-fated label) is taken directly from a Nick Cave book: And the Ass Saw the Angel, but you all knew that already.
Anyway, sycophantic praise aside, by sheer chance I spotted The Death of Bunny Munro on a shop bookshelf on its week of release, and quite likely made some sort of yelping sound before throwing money at someone and reading it on the closest toilet to hand. Bunny, essentially, revolves around one man's descent into increasingly depraved encounters with members of the fairer sex. Bunny is a cosmetic salesman, and master cocksmith, but following his wife's suicide he finds both tasks a lot more of an uphill struggle, especially with his young son in tow. An ill-fated journey ensues as Bunny attempts to finish his client list, while a serial killer dressed as the devil slowly makes his way south...
The scope and Scale of Bunny Munro is so, so different from And the Ass... it took some acclimatising. The book's entirely set in the very real place of Brighton, Cave's place of residence for some years, which is a far cry from the hugely abstracted apocalyptic americana/australiana of And the Ass... The lyrical voice of Bunny is clearly different too, Bunny Sr sounding so much older, the world around him miserable just by its dull reality. Like everything Cave does the book is poetic and flows brilliantly, the pages bleed menace, and I often found myself castigating myself for rooting for such a horrible degenerate. Having said that, I think a bit of Bunny resides in every man, he certainly has aspects of Cave in him - just listen to Grinderman. I have to say I was left a little cold by the resolution, but then And the Ass... is one of my all time favourite books, so it was always going to be a hard book to equal.
A few months after, I noticed that an audiobook version was being released, and purchased that with almost as much relish. I actually found that I enjoyed the audio version of the book a hell of a lot more. The voice of Bunny sounded so much more genuine when put through the Aussie twang of Nick Cave. As an added bonus, the whole story has a sparse Warren Ellis/Nick Cave soundtrack, which is surely a must-have for the Nick Cave completionistas. The whole book has this unmistakeable 'road trip in hell' quality about it and for that reason it begs to be heard on a dark drive down the M1. Just look out for those cement mixers.
In honour of the audio greatness, here's a youtube link to Cave reading one of my favourite parts.
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