READERS GUIDE
AN INTRODUCTION TO BUNNY BY MONA AWAD“We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn’t we?”
Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England’s Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction-writing cohort—a secretive clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one.
Samantha’s only friend, Ava, a caustic art school dropout, wouldn’t be caught dead with the Bunnies, whose cultish friendship she considers the ultimate, warped embodiment of the university itself: a haven for the grossly privileged to make narcissistic, trivial art. But Samantha—lonely, insecure, and creatively blocked—perversely longs for their approval and acceptance, even if she can’t admit it. So when she receives a shimmering, heart-smattered invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled Smut Salon in the mail, Samantha’s curiosity gets the better of her, and she finds herself irresistibly drawn to their front door—ditching Ava in the process. As the night progresses, she discovers that the Bunnies’ inner universe is far darker and more bizarre than she or Ava could have ever imagined.
As if in a trance, Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies’ sinister yet saccharine world. Before long, she is allowed to partake in their ritualistic off-campus where she watches in horror as the Bunnies magically conjure one of their hybrid “Drafts”—a gruesome, volatile process that tests the limits of their collective creativity and ambition. The more time she spends with the Bunnies, and the further she drifts from her and Ava’s usual routine, the more the edges of reality seem to blur. Soon they will lose control of one of their monstrous creations—and Samantha’s friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.
A spellbinding, down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, creativity and agency, and friendship and desire, Bunny is the dazzlingly original second book from Mona Awad, one of our most fearless and inventive chroniclers of the female experience.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The Bunnies embody one vision of all-consuming female friendship, in which women subordinate their individuality and agency in order to be absorbed by the powerful hive mind of the clique and be offered its protection. Their interactions are portrayed as sickeningly (and comically) saccharine and superficial, but also strangely seductive, as Samantha discovers when the intensity of their collective gaze becomes an irresistible alternative to the loneliness of being an outsider in her program. Did aspects of Samantha’s encounters with the Bunnies remind you of experiences in your own life? What do their interactions reveal about the roles vulnerability, cruelty, and desire have to play in friendship, in general, and female friendship, in particular?
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? How do Samantha and Ava perform for each other? What is each seeking from the other as their relationship evolves? What questions were provoked or resolved by the ending?
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. What details did you find especially effective or poignant in the satire? How do you think the characters’ creativity is shaped by the (both on- and off-campus) workshop environment? Did these characterizations resonate with any of your real-life experiences?
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? What do these constructions reveal about the psychologies and artistic processes of their creators?
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? Is it possible for disorienting settings and scenes to produce emotional clarity? What is the power and purpose of blurring the boundaries of reality in storytelling?
6. What do you think about Max, his relationship with Ava, and his manipulation of the Bunnies?
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?
