Scraps
(Feed)
News
Back Home
About
What is roseability?
Community
Networking
Last.fm
Currently Hearing
The Death of Bunny Munro & Kornwolf
// 26th October
I pre-ordered Nick Cave’s second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro a little while back. After a first novel like his, one doesn’t need to think twice. Unfortunately The Death of Bunny Munro wasn’t great. It was all Cave, that’s for sure. Any close follower of his could see his humour and style, and traces of other work written all over it. But by the time I finished it I seriously wondered if he hadn’t just deliberately written complete junk as some sort of social experiment to see who would lap it up as if it were genius. The hype was big before the book was released, but it’s been eerily quiet ever since. It’s supposed to be the tragicomic story of Bunny Munro, a sex-crazed door-to-door salesman who, on the death of his wife, takes his son on the road trip of his life. Well, the last road trip of his life. Is it tragic? Almost. It it comic? Almost. Is it pornographic? Very. Is the twist at the end worth it? Well, I’d hardly call it a twist. If one was to study the book, high-school style, there’d be a tonne of material to work with, but that in itself doesn’t make it a good book. It’s disconcertingly easy to read, and it’s definitely ‘a page-turner’, but when all’s done, there’s not much to it.
Kornwolf, on the other hand, is sensational…
“Kornwolf is about Rumspringa, fisticuffs, homecomings, alienation, and AMish whiskey ministers, as seen through the eyes of a young man who finds himself inexplicably waking up in the fields every morning.”
Much like Lord of The Barnyard, it’s a southern-gothic romp. It’s about The Basin, a collection of small towns–Lampeter, Intercourse, Blue Ball, Bird-in-Hand, Laycock, and Paradise (yep, those towns actually exist. You couldn’t make that up), made up of communities of Amish Mennonites and English Redcoats who are suffering harassment from The Blue Ball Devil, a werewolf, the Kornwolf, who for some reason looks a little bit like Richard Nixon. Rural American culture, religio-superstition, terror, slapstick, and wit are piled up as fast as cop-cruisers on Route 30. The end is apparent from the start, but you can’t help but read on for the sheer absurdity of it. Every lunge toward hysteria goes a little further than the last until the whole thing goes beyond the point of no return. It’s faster and easier to read (and therefore there’s much less grinding of the teeth) than Lord of The Barnyard, and it’s also more fantastical–both things I am not particularly partial to, but it’s almost as good anyway.
No Comments
Add a comment: