Bunny

Bunny is a 2019 novel by Mona Awad, which Vogue, the New York Public Library, and Time named one of the best books of 2019. A graduate of Brown University’s Literary Arts program, Awad satirizes creative writing and academia. The story uses a clique of mean girls and magical realism to demonstrate the fantastical drama that can occur in elite, or supposedly elite, spaces. The book touches on themes like hybridity and art versus reality. Bunny was a finalist for the New England Book Award.

The study guide refers to the 2019 eBook edition of Bunny, published by Viking.

Content Warning: The source material references sexual misconduct, graphic depictions of animal abuse, and offensive language regarding disability that is reproduced only in quotations.

Plot Summary

Samantha Mackey is a 25-year-old fiction writer seeking an MFA in creative writing at the prestigious Warren University. She’s part of the Narrative Arts department, and so are four other young women: Creepy Doll (Kira), Cupcake (Caroline), Vignette (Victoria), and the Duchess (Eleanor). The four women form a powerful clique of mean girls, the Bunnies, by mixing cuteness, sex, and violence. They call each other Bunny, and Samantha and her best friend, the staunch non-conformist Ava, think the Bunnies are disturbing and cultish.

In her first year at Warren, Samantha avoided workshops to get away from them. After a pretentious welcome-back party to start the second year, Samantha finds an invitation to a Bunny event, the Smut Salon, in her school mailbox. Ava claims she doesn’t care if Samantha goes, but Samantha’s attendance leads to a fight between them. At the Smut Salon, the Bunnies perform dramatic readings of erotic works, and Samantha tells a story about a boy, Rob Valencia, whom she liked in high school. The Bunnies want her to catch a bunny, but Samantha doesn’t understand the assignment and leaves.

The fiction workshop is in a classroom called the Cave, and Samantha thinks the teacher, a woman named Fosco, is a villain. The Bunnies share their experimental works that fuse twee aesthetics with violence and sexuality. Samantha’s work is more traditional—there’s a discernable plot. The Bunnies typically criticize Samantha’s relatively conventional stories, but following the Smut Salon, they find ways to compliment her work.

Samantha and Ava like to dance together, and Samantha finds Ava at a tango class. Ava continues to claim she doesn’t care if Samantha hangs out with the Bunnies, and Samantha goes to another Bunny event, Prom Night. The Bunnies dance with four attractive young men wearing matching suits who speak like pompous lotharios. Rob Valencia knocks on the door and confesses his love for Samantha. As with the other young men, he starts chewing on her. Samantha tells him to stop, so he insults her. Then his head explodes.

There’s a large rabbit population in Warren, and the Bunnies use rabbits to create young men that reflect their literary, pop-culture desires. The Bunnies show Samantha the process: They gather around a rabbit, the rabbit explodes, and soon, a young man appears. The Bunnies have many names for these young men—Drafts, Darlings, Hybrids—and they compare their project to creating art or writing. If a Draft doesn’t work out, they behead it with an ax and make a new one.

Samantha becomes a Bunny and joins the process. The clique consumes her identity, and it becomes difficult to separate one Bunny from another. As they waltz through the supposedly dangerous town, Ava pulls Samantha away from the clique but then leaves her again. With help from Jonah, an amicable poetry student, Samantha drives around town looking for Ava but can’t find her. She leads a rabbit workshop and inadvertently creates a young man, Max, out of a stag.

As winter break approaches and Samantha’s relationship with the Bunnies cools, Samantha gets sick and sad. She can’t write, and her thesis advisor, the Lion, is worried. Samantha hints at an inappropriate relationship with the Lion, but the Lion isn’t a predator. One night last year, Samantha overshared with him, so now things are a bit awkward.

At a grocery store, Samantha sees Max shoplifting. She goes to an awkward Christmas gathering at Fosco’s house, then runs into Max again and follows him. He leads her back to Ava, who helps her recover from her Bunny trauma. In Ava’s home, Samantha can write and keep her distance from Warren and the Bunnies. Max is dating Ava and lives in Samantha’s old room upstairs. As he’s Samantha’s Draft, he says things to her that Samantha wrote in her notebook.

Snooping around his room, she sees her notebook. Max added a list of the Bunnies’ emails and passwords. She also finds his phone and sees the Bunnies are sending Max lovesick texts; they’re obsessed with him. At an emergency workshop, the Bunnies look notably abject and read works that center on boys like Max. At a scary, fantastical late-night thesis meeting, Samantha supposedly meets the Lion and Fosco, but it’s probably Bunnies pretending to be them. They tie her up and leave her in the Cave. A weary janitor frees her.

At Ava’s house, Max holds a bloody swan. Ava is dead—the Bunnies killed her. Ava wasn’t a real woman; the night Samantha poured out her feelings to the Lion, she sat on a bench in front of a pond with a swan in it. Lonely, Samantha transformed the swan into a best friend. To get revenge, Max takes an ax and marches to the Bunnies. Samantha stops him from killing them. She and the Bunnies have a sassy encounter. They spot Max outside and storm him as if he’s a world-famous star. Samantha beheads Max with an ax, and he turns back into a deer.

At graduation, the Bunnies arrive with many injuries. They hurt themselves fawning over Max. Samantha patches things up with the Lion and solidifies her friendship with Jonah—the kind poetry student that didn’t start life as a rabbit or deer.