Bunny
Hamish Hamilton, 320 pages
Samantha Heather Mackey isn’t like the other MFA students at Warren University, an Ivy-League school in a seemingly quaint New England town. She doesn’t vacation in the Hamptons, squeal with delight at the sight of her cohort, or outfit herself in tulle and pastels. The protagonist of Mona Awad’s new novel,
Bunny, is a creative-writing student on a scholarship who barely gets by on stipend cheques. She’s no stranger to darkness family issues lurk in her past but even so, she’s unprepared for the violent events that follow after she accepts an invitation to attend a “Smut Salon” hosted by the clique of rich girls (or “Bunnies”) she so loathes.