Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge discussion

This is the May Monthly Group Read discussion for Bunny by Mona Awad. This book can be used to fulfill prompt #24 A book with a rabbit on the cover. In honor of springtime in the Northern Hemisphere.

Since no "literary luminar" has volunteered to lead this discussion, it appears that anarchy reigns! I will not be reading this one since it is HORROR, but I'm certain there will be a good discussion amongst those anxious to read and talk about it!

Every person reads at a different pace, so please use spoiler tags if you are sharing any plot-related surprises. This allows others to decide whether this information might reveal surprising information they have not yet read.

It can also be helpful to other readers if you post the location within the book noting your progress (chapter and/or page number) with the spoiler. That way, if someone else has read that far they can go ahead and open the spoiler, but if not, they'll know to skip it for now and return later...

TO ADD SPOILER TAGS:
Use this for spoilers, just remove the spaces:
< spoiler > write your spoiler here and close with < / spoiler >

Posts here should only be contributions to discussion about this book.

Got a copy from the library! Is anyone reading this? I’m going to try to actually stick to the book this month instead of getting distracted like always

I read it last summer and can't wait to hear what everyone else thinks.

I read this last year, and like Dubhease, am so interested to hear people's thoughts! I never participate the monthly discussions because of timing and the fact that I don't remember book details much, but am curious if I'll remember enough about this one to be able to participate some.

I am shocked that I am not liking this as much as I thought I would. I am finding the style to be extremely choppy and in short bursts which I can’t stand. I think I know why it’s done this way but it is really bothering me. As I am reading, I am finding that I don’t even know what is happening half the time. Is anyone else having trouble?

Carissa wrote: "I am shocked that I am not liking this as much as I thought I would. I am finding the style to be extremely choppy and in short bursts which I can’t stand. I think I know why it’s done this way but..."

Ooohhh...that sounds like a writing style that I would either really enjoy or truly despise! :)

I hope you-all get to discuss this!! :)

I just got this one from the library and I'm going to start reading it tomorrow

This book so far is kind of weird but I think I like it. I just finished part 1 and (view spoiler)[ I can't figure out if this is all really happening or maybe it's all in Samantha's head. Or maybe, since she is a writer, its all a story she is creating. (hide spoiler)] I'm interested in reading more.

Read half the book before I put together that the college is called Warren like a rabbit warren

I finished this book a week ago and this book is so so so weird. I would love to see this done as an indie film. However the writing style wasn't for me.

Felicia wrote: "Read half the book before I put together that the college is called Warren like a rabbit warren"
That's kinda cool!

Space wrote: "I finished this book a week ago and this book is so so so weird. I would love to see this done as an indie film. However the writing style wasn't for me."
What about it made it "weird" for you, Space?

Carissa wrote: "I am shocked that I am not liking this as much as I thought I would. I am finding the style to be extremely choppy and in short bursts which I can’t stand. I think I know why it’s done this way but..."
Space did say it was "so so so weird"!

I finished a few days ago, and I'm very torn on how to rate it. I loved the majority of it, but found the last quarter super confusing and that threw me off.

One thing I'm a little surprised I've never really seen mentioned in discussions of the book, and I'm pretty sure this is not a spoiler, is the Alice in Wonderland references.

Huh. Not a lot of discussion of this book. That's too bad because I'm nearly halfway through it and it's warping my brain. I need someone to tell me what to think about it lol not really. But I do want to hear what other people think about it. I think I miss a lot -- didn't catch Warren, although I did get a couple of the Alice references.

Kate wrote: "Huh. Not a lot of discussion of this book. That's too bad because I'm nearly halfway through it and it's warping my brain. I need someone to tell me what to think about it lol not really. But I do ..."




Yes it's been really quiet here!!!

I haven't read it yet so I can't participate in discussion, but the publisher put together a list of questions, maybe this will help start a discussion

Their questions are really long with lots of points to spur discussion, but I ripped the highlights just to make a terse list. ".." indicates a longer, more nuanced question - see this link for more detail:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...



QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. The Bunnies embody one vision of all-consuming female friendship ... Did aspects of Samantha’s encounters with the Bunnies remind you of experiences in your own life?

2. Discuss Samantha and Ava’s relationship dynamic. Is it a mature, refreshing alternative to the Bunnies’ treacly affection and codependence, or can their bond also be read as unhealthy in its own way? ...

3. Bunny parodies the culture of an MFA program at an elite, coastal university, amplifying the jargon, camaraderie, posturing, and insularity of the institution to surreal and grotesque extremes. ... Did these characterizations resonate with any of your real-life experiences?

3a. How do you usually feel about reading satire?

4. What do you make of the Bunnies’ “Drafts,” the violent conceptions behind them, and the specific ways in which they arrive incomplete and repeatedly come undone? ...

5. The world of Bunny becomes increasingly eccentric, fantastical, and hallucinatory as the novel progresses, with cult teen movie and horror tropes woven throughout. How do these genre elements relate to the larger themes of the novel and influence your perception of the central conflicts? ...

6. What do you think about Max... ?

7. Finally, how would you characterize Samantha’s personal transformation over the course of the novel? What kind of work do you think she’ll go on to create in the future?

thank you!

My question to anyone who has finished is (view spoiler)[How much of the book did you think was real?

People seem divided into two camps. 1) Samantha is schizophrenic. The woman reading symptoms on the bus never happened. Sam was reading it to herself. Ava never existed or Max. The bunnies might have, but they were just normal girls.

2) Everything happened as told in the book.

I think I'm in camp 2. I read a lot of fantasy, and if I'm good with dragons, shadowhunters, orcs, hobbits, elves, faeries, and mermaids, then why can't a writer create a world with hybrids made from swans, deer, and bunnies?

I still haven't decided whether Sam is an unreliable narrator or whether she didn't know that she'd created Ava. (hide spoiler)]

To try and answer some of Nadine's questions:

1. Where the bunnies supposed to be mean girls? They seemed that way at first, but they did try to welcome Sam to the group. Cliques are sometimes in the eye of the beholder. I've felt excluded by them, but I've also been accused of being in one. The accusation was by someone with terrible social skills. We didn't think we were being exclusive. Shallow is also sometimes in the eye of the beholder.

3. If Bunny was supposed to be satire of being in a masters program, I don't think it worked. I don't think it's enough of a universal enough experience for enough readers to be in on the joke. If it was meant to be satire for the 1% of readers who did a fine arts masters, but just fantasy/horror for everyone else, then well played.

5. I didn't really enjoy this part of it. Unreliable narrators are a great twist. Not being able to figure out WTF is happening in the story often seems like bad writing and not a deliberate choice. One or two deliberately confusing chapters I can live with.

6. Max seemed like a great revenge tool on the bunnies, especially given what we later learn about him. I couldn't figure out the point of (view spoiler)[ Max and Ava being a couple. Was it supposed to be that her creations were combining? Or getting the better of her? Or taking on a life of their own? Or did she just imagine her two imaginary friends having an affair? (hide spoiler)]

Dubhease wrote: "My question to anyone who has finished is .....

I finished the book and (view spoiler)[I went the opposite direction than you. I ended up thinking that Sam is definitely imagining pretty much all of this. I think the mean girls were real but she imagined the whole cultish aspect of them. I think Ava and Max were all in her head. She just seemed like a really lonely person with a rich imagination. Or since she is a writer it could be that this is all a story she has written? (hide spoiler)]

Ok, I’m about a third of the way through- I’m going to try to actually finish the BOM during the month we’re reading it…

I remember when this first came out, it seemed like every book reviewer on YouTube was obsessed with it. And I remember thinking- doesn’t sound like my kind of book. I was right. I want to see how this one plays out, but not sure I’ll pick up anything else by this author.

I am leaving this up throughout the first few days of June just in case others haven't yet commented and would like to do so...

It will then reside in the 2023 Monthly Group Read folder for the near and far future! :)

I just read this book!! Only a month too late!!!

I have QUESTIONS. maybe some of you who read it last month can remember it well enough to discuss?


I struggled with a few things (okay this is more than "a few"): 
(view spoiler)[1. Separating the real and the imaginary - where is the line drawn. It was clear from the beginning that Ava is imaginary.
But ...  If Ava is imaginary, then Max is imaginary, and Max and Samantha clearly have a "Fight Club" thing going on where Max is actually Samantha, (so Max's relationship with Ava is just Samantha allowing herself to be both friends and lovers with her imaginary friend Ava), but then how does Max interact with the Bunnies?  Are the Bunnies entirely imaginary?  Or are they real people, and only Max's interactions with them are imaginary?
2.  Assuming the Bunnies are real, and Smut Salon is real, why did they suddenly decide to invite Samantha?  At one point in Chapter 14 they whisper to each other about it ("Are we sure we want to let her into Workshop?"), but we never learn what they said.  The "blue tic tacs" they give her prevent her schizophrenic hallucinations and make Ava disappear, but why do they do this?? This is the one part of the book that I'm really stuck on and can't let go. All of the other fuzziness is fine, but I don't understand why the Bunnies involved Samantha.   
3. Why do the Bunnies go to all the trouble of creating their "darlings"?  They seem social enough to not need to go to all this trouble to create companions.  Is this horror aspect of the book real or imaginary?  I don't mind this part being left nebulous, that's my favorite kind of horror.
4. Maybe the Bunnies are real and the Smut Salon is real and their darlings are real and Max is real, but only Ava is imaginary.  That one doesn't work though, because Max and Ava interact, and at one point Ava and the Bunnies interact.
5. Max does interact with all the Bunnies, at the bus stop right after Samantha created him, but maybe that "Max" was a real person, and Samantha used him to later create her imaginary Max who is her alter-ego.
6.  Maybe the Bunnies are real people, but all of their interactions with Samantha, their Smut Salon, and their darlings are fictional, and this is what Samantha's thesis is,  her horror story based on real people at Warren.  That still leaves open the question of WHY they suddenly included Samantha in Smut Salon.  Even if it was all Samantha's fictional piece, fictional characters need motivations, so what was the motivation?
7. What is the real reason that "the Lion" (aka Alan) started giving Samantha the massive cold shoulder?  Is that all in her head, or is it real?  Is it all in her head, and meant to be the trigger that causes Samantha to create Ava after moping at a swan pond drowning in sadness and embarrassment after feeling rejected by Alan? (I decided that yes, this is the case)
8.  Is Jonah real?  (I decided that yes, he is real.)  Why is Samantha so dead set on avoiding him - he seems like a nice person, why does she tell him "sorry I've got to go" every single time he strikes up a conversation with her??  I'm massively antisocial but even I would stop and chat with him.
9. Is Fosco (aka Ursula) real?  Is the writing workshop real?  Is Warren University real? (I decided that yes it is real, but Samantha's fellow students are completely different from the "Bunnies" in this story, and this story is in fact Samantha's thesis.)
10.  How much of Samantha's writer's block is tied up in her schizophrenia and medication?  Is the writer's block caused by taking medication to prevent the hallucinations?
11.  Assuming that the Lion and Fosco are both real, and the actual writing workshop is real and Warren Univ is real and Fosco's office is real ...  what happened in Chapter 35 when Samantha went to Fosco's office to meet her and the Lion but ended up knocked out and then tied to a chair??  Was this actually an intervention and they checked her into a mental hospital where she was temporarily put in restraints?  (That's the best spin I can put on Chapter 35.)
12.  Why does Samantha repeatedly describe the smell of muffin mix on fire?  Is this like a stroke victim smelling toast? is she repeatedly having a stroke?  or is this more like the boy in the Shining smelling oranges?  It's so specific, and it's repeated, but I never understood it.
13.  Why does Samantha seem to have a fixation on gloves?  Ava wears mesh gloves, the darlings wear leather gloves,  And why so much fishnet??  Fishnet stockings, fishnet gloves on Ava, fishnet veil worn by the Bunnies ...
14. Why were the Bunnies all injured at the end of the story?  Is that real?  Did Samantha attack them? (If so, why didn't they press charges??)
15.  If Ava was imaginary, what was happening in Chapter 36 when Samantha comes back to the (abandoned) house and finds Max bent over a swan in a pool of blood with an ax in it?  Was any of that - Max, the swan, the ax, the blood, the feathers - real?  This passage seems to be acknowledging that Samantha was holed up in an abandoned house, and Ava was a hallucination, and Max is Samantha's alter-ego a la Fight Club, but what about the swan and the blood and the ax??  Did SAMANTHA actually kill a swan???  Did Samantha actually confront the Bunnies with the ax?   
16. Why the fixation on an ax?  Why the repeated comments about people possibly being found beheaded throughout the city?  At first I thought that was the Darlings being killed and disposed of, and then I thought it was all part of Samantha's hallucination, and now I'm just not sure where the line is drawn.
17.  Why so many comments about being tall?  Samantha is tall, Ava is tall, Max is tall.  Was Samantha bullied for being tall as a girl?
18. Why does the ax kill both Ava and the swan, but it kills only Max and frees the stag to walk away uninjured?

Somehow at the end of Fight Club I wasn't left with all these questions, it all came together in the end.  But this book just left me scratching my head.  (hide spoiler)]  Because of this confusion, I can't give this a full five stars.  I wanted this book to ultimately answer my questions, and it didn't.

Okay so now that I got all THAT off my chest, I can go back and try to answer the discussion questions I previously pasted into this chat.


QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. The Bunnies embody one vision of all-consuming female friendship ... Did aspects of Samantha’s encounters with the Bunnies remind you of experiences in your own life?

Nope not at all. At first I hated the Bunnies, until I realized they were MEANT to be over the top and ridiculous, I was meant to laugh, and then I started laughing a lot. Victoria in particular cracked me up.


2. Discuss Samantha and Ava’s relationship dynamic. Is it a mature, refreshing alternative to the Bunnies’ treacly affection and codependence, or can their bond also be read as unhealthy in its own way? ...

At first I hated Ava's relentless "cool girl bitch" nonsense, but then I finally figured out it was all meant to be satire, even this part. (view spoiler)[And yeah, for sure their bond was unhealthy. Nothing about Samantha was mentally healthy, because she is mentally ill, and all of this is a reflection of that. (hide spoiler)]


3. Bunny parodies the culture of an MFA program at an elite, coastal university, amplifying the jargon, camaraderie, posturing, and insularity of the institution to surreal and grotesque extremes. ... Did these characterizations resonate with any of your real-life experiences?

I thought it was pretty funny, especially the jargon. I have seen people in various FB groups and reddit subs, and in some books of essays, spout nonsense like this, and I always hate it. What comes to mind first: the memoir by Carrie Brownstein. Like, dang girl, let it go, drop all that academic speech.



3a. How do you usually feel about reading satire?

I usually hate it!! So I was really reluctant to read this book.


4. What do you make of the Bunnies’ “Drafts,” the violent conceptions behind them, and the specific ways in which they arrive incomplete and repeatedly come undone? ...

(view spoiler)[ I guess this was all meant to be a big metaphor for writing, how writers have to violently edit their work to get to the final piece? "Kill your darlings" was pretty much in-your-face saying this.

But if I look at this as a horror novel and this is really happening, I had to ask: why. Why do the Bunnies bother expending all their energy on creating these monstrosities? They have each other, so they are not desperate for companionship. Do they just really REALLY want to chat with the perfect man? Could these creations really satisfy that need?? It didn't seem like it. We are told explicitly that the Hybrids have no genitals so they can't have sex.

I guess the Bunnies are a big sexually frustrated group! (hide spoiler)]



5. The world of Bunny becomes increasingly eccentric, fantastical, and hallucinatory as the novel progresses, with cult teen movie and horror tropes woven throughout. How do these genre elements relate to the larger themes of the novel and influence your perception of the central conflicts? ...

I thought Awad left some of this too open-ended. I was left with too many questions. (LOL see my post just above this one!) That frustrated ME.



6. What do you think about Max... ?

I liked him a lot! He was the best part of the book!! (view spoiler)[It was clear that he WAS Samantha, which I thought was fun. I wondered how other people she interacted with when she was Max felt about Max? In Fight Club, we get a good idea of how people around him feel about Tyler, but we never got a good idea of how real people felt about Max. (hide spoiler)]



7. Finally, how would you characterize Samantha’s personal transformation over the course of the novel? What kind of work do you think she’ll go on to create in the future?

It's not clear to me that she DID go through any sort of transformation. (view spoiler)[ Her entire life has been a struggle, being told to get a grip on reality, take meds ,but refusing to do it, running away with her hallucinations, aggressively living in her imagination. It seems that she's always been aware of the fact that she does this - she hallucinates for a while, a few years maybe, and then comes to reality, and then goes back into fantasy. And the ending, where the MUD talks to her, seems to imply that she's busy creating a new hallucination to live in.

I have no idea how to feel about that. (hide spoiler)]

Well, I've just finished this, and it was so perplexing that I actually had a dream where I was trying to explain the book to my husband.

Is it a 'good book'? I don't know, but there hasn't been a book this year which has so played on my mind during reading.

At one point during Workshop, Samantha refers to one of the Bunnies' stories as 'pretentious crap' and I did wonder at one point if Awad was saying 'Yes, that's what this book is and look at you all with your literary criticism of it'. But then, when I was trying to make sense of the story, I went on to YouTube and found a Zoom literary discussion between Awad and Margaret Atwood, and I decided that couldn't be the case.

Answering the questions Nadine has posted:

1. The Bunnies embody one vision of all-consuming female friendship. Did aspects of Samantha’s encounters with the Bunnies remind you of experiences in your own life?

There was definitely a clique of 'cool' girls in my high school class, and I definitely wasn't cool enough to belong, but I (and as far as I know anyone else not cool enough to be included) didn't make life revolve around them. I had one very close girl friend as a child and a very close female friend now, but the latter is not all-consuming. I think the friendship as children was very intense, but only for periods of time - we did have other friends.

I think that the Bunnies are excluding Samantha and that they probably have genuine reasons for doing so. (view spoiler)[ Samantha may be obviously mentally unwell, and there is also the speculation that she has been using a relationship with 'The Lion' to curry favour with a tutor. However, I also think that there is a class barrier and that the Bunnies are fascinated by Samantha and her experiences. Much of the Bunnies' interactions with each other though are exaggerations/hallucinations of Samantha's. (hide spoiler)]

I think the use of the word 'consuming' is quite interesting with regard to the Bunnies because (view spoiler)[ they are so often described in terms of food, not only Cupcake, but the way in which they treat each other as almost edible. And there's the strange muffin smell which Samantha associates with them (hide spoiler)]


2. Discuss Samantha and Ava’s relationship dynamic. Is it a mature, refreshing alternative to the Bunnies’ treacly affection and codependence, or can their bond also be read as unhealthy in its own way?

(view spoiler)[ Since Ava is a construct of Samantha's it is really not a relationship with another person. If it were a true relationship, then there are times when it is not healthy - it seems to be founded on hatred of the Bunnies, and Samantha's dependency on Ava isn't particularly healthy. However, I see Ava as self-help for Samantha, and I wonder if Ava's destruction at the end, means that Samantha is moving into a period of mental wellness or what passes for mental wellness. Of course, 'Samantha' may not actually be a real mentally ill person, but a construct herself, and the whole book is simply the literary thesis of an unknown character. (hide spoiler)]

3. Bunny parodies the culture of an MFA program at an elite, coastal university, amplifying the jargon, camaraderie, posturing, and insularity of the institution to surreal and grotesque extremes. Did these characterizations resonate with any of your real-life experiences?

Not particularly, but I thought the interactions were very funny, and I don't think you have to have experienced that set-up to be amused.

3a. How do you usually feel about reading satire?

I enjoy it.

4. What do you make of the Bunnies’ “Drafts,” the violent conceptions behind them, and the specific ways in which they arrive incomplete and repeatedly come undone?

I assume they are a reference to the process of writing, the whole 'kill your darlings' advice. (view spoiler)[ If this creation is actually happening, then it suggests that the Bunnies are immature, perhaps avoiding sex or so intertwined in a vaguely sapphic way that they don't want a real world relationship with a man. (hide spoiler)]

5. The world of Bunny becomes increasingly eccentric, fantastical, and hallucinatory as the novel progresses, with cult teen movie and horror tropes woven throughout. How do these genre elements relate to the larger themes of the novel and influence your perception of the central conflicts?

One reviewer I watched on YouTube pointed out the general immaturity of the characters, and the relationship of that to high school movie tropes. These women must be around 23/24, perhaps older, but the whole Bunnies clique seems very high school, as does Samantha's dependent relationship with Ava (view spoiler)[(if it were actually a real relationship) (hide spoiler)].

I'm not sure what Awad intends with the movie references. They appear but are not really developed in any way. It feels like we are getting a brownie point for spotting an e.g. Carrie reference, but it doesn't go anywhere. The same with the Alice references - the rabbit hole, the Duchess etc.

I wonder about the naming of the characters. The Heather in Samantha's name, is clearly to reference the mean girls movie trope; is Samantha a Bewitched reference? Is Ava a reference to Eve or to avian?

6. What do you think about Max?

(view spoiler)[ If he were 'real' then I think he would show that Samantha is stronger than the Bunnies in being able to produce a fully functioning! male, and also that he is her way of enabling a full relationship with Ava. However, as a construct, I wonder if he is a way that Samantha's mind works its way back to a relatively healthy state. (hide spoiler)]

7. Finally, how would you characterize Samantha’s personal transformation over the course of the novel? What kind of work do you think she’ll go on to create in the future?

(view spoiler)[ I don't think she particularly went through any transformation. She was ill, got worse and then better. I think she will produce further dark work in periods of lucidity. If the whole book is actually the thesis of an unknown character or the 'actual' Samantha, then I think her writing will mature and that she will be a successful writer (hide spoiler)]