Nick Cave's Exercise in Patience

Nick Cave, best known as being the lead singer of the Australian rock band "Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds," has built a career out of his swirling, apocalyptic story telling. In all of his music projects ("The Bad Seeds," "The Birthday Party," "Grinderman"), his lyrics jump out from the music, and even in their most obscure forms, seem to indicate some sort of narrative.

In his second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, Mr. Cave takes his own prowess for lyric narratives and converts them into a powerful, paranoid, and exhaustive tale. The book tells the story of Bunny Munro, a door-to-door beauty product salesman, who is also an alcoholic, womanizing sex-addict. After the suicide of his wife, he and his young son go on a surreal, nightmarish road trip around his hometown of Brighton, England, and we watch as Bunny's unflappable ego beings to unravel while he comes to grips with his own morality.

The novel is an exercise in patience and tolerance, for I haven't encountered a more frustrating and morally starved protagonist since Breaking Bad's Walter White. There were several times, while reading, that I wanted to reach through the text and punch Bunny square in the jaw, but at the same time, he is a sympathetic character, and a damn-well charming one at that.

All-in-all, it was a good read. Stocked with interesting passages, floaty philosophy, and incredibly memorable characters, The Death of Bunny Munro is a well-worthy addition to the already magnificent Nick Cave catalogue.