Our Take

Mona Awad has crafted something truly singular with Bunny—a novel that defies easy categorization, blending campus satire, psychological horror, and surrealist nightmare into a fever dream about female friendship, creative ambition, and the desperate hunger to belong. What begins as a sharp satire of MFA culture and wealthy mean girls gradually descends into genuinely disturbing territory as the Bunnies' "Workshop" reveals itself to be something far darker than pretentious writing exercises. Awad captures the toxic dynamics of female friendship with surgical precision—the performative niceness masking cruelty, the way groups create their own reality and language, the intoxicating pull of acceptance even when you know something is deeply wrong. Samantha is a compelling unreliable narrator, her loneliness and artistic frustration making her vulnerable to the Bunnies' cult-like appeal even as she maintains her cynical exterior. The prose shifts brilliantly between Samantha's caustic observations and the Bunnies' cloying baby-talk, creating an increasingly disorienting reading experience that mirrors Samantha's psychological unraveling. Awad never fully explains what's literal versus metaphorical, leaving readers to interpret whether the monstrous creations are real or manifestations of creative obsession and trauma. The novel works as both campus satire and genuine horror, skewering MFA pretensions while delivering visceral body horror. Readers who loved Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation or Carmen Maria Machado's surrealist fiction will recognize Awad's fearless exploration of female psychology. For anyone seeking fiction that's genuinely weird, darkly funny, and uncompromisingly original, Bunny is unforgettable.