When Mona Awad published her sophomore novel, “Bunny,” in 2019, it wasn’t immediately apparent that she had a phenomenon on her hands.
Like her debut, the Giller-nominated “13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl,” critics adored it. But initial sales were what you’d expect for literary fiction in a market that was about to make Colleen Hoover a household name.
Then, a full two years after its release, Awad’s fever dream of a dark comedy about a lonely MFA student drawn into a toxically enmeshed quartet of peers who call each other Bunny went viral on BookTok.
“I started getting word from my publisher that the sales from ‘Bunny’ were really going up. I started noticing that I was getting tagged in posts online, and readers were starting to get tattoos of Bunny, and making art,” said Awad. “They were starting to post about it while wearing bunny ears, and doing these really playful, theatrical collages. Years after the fact, it was just taking off.”
Awad, who only created a TikTok account for herself earlier this year and has posted just once, sees ‘Bunny’s online fame as something separate from herself. “As a writer, I don’t have anything to do with it,” she said. “It belongs to readers, as it should.”
She does have a few theories as to why the book resonated so strongly with people, primarily that it speaks to almost anyone who feels alienated in the world. “It’s been a very isolating, dark time,” said Awad. “Everybody knows that feeling of not belonging, and I think Bunny gives expression to that.”
But also, she thinks that a lot of people just really enjoy the Bunnies, who are like a quasi-coven of “Mean Girls” — if Regina et. al. were into experimental short fiction — with a penchant for emojis and a little light kidnapping.
The fans are in for a treat with Awad’s just-published sequel, “We Love You, Bunny.” It’s a retelling of the story from the first book, but this time from the perspective of the Bunnies.
“I had so much fun writing this. It was such a joy to be with these characters again and finally be in the heads of the actual Bunnies individually, and to get to know them better,” said Awad. “They surprised me, and they did delight me, even in their awfulness.”
For instance, she found the dynamic between the young women to be an unexpectedly nuanced blend of love and jealousy, and their collective internal world much more delicate and fraught than the menacing front they projected as a group.
“As a writer, as a creator, there are surprising moments that can happen if you let yourself be in the scene, in the mind and the body of the character,” Awad explained. “If you can make that leap, you can be surprised in the moment and have revelations like that.”
While Awad had missed the world of “Bunny,” she credits the groundswell of reader enthusiasm with spurring the sequel. “They were keeping it alive in my head, and their response to it was so creative that I was thinking about it more and more,” she said. “I do think it led me down the path of starting to imagine what might happen before — and after.”
Awad was born in Montreal and spent her teens in Mississauga (or “Misery Saga,” as it became in her debut novel), though she now lives in Boston and teaches creative writing at Syracuse University in New York. She nodded to the country she left over 15 years ago when naming the actual rabbit the Bunnies animate using magic and their own repressed desires, Frankenstein-meets-Ouija-meets-manifestation-gone-awry-style: Aerius, a Canadian allergy medication.
“It was a total hat tip to the Canadians, and my Canadian heritage, but also I wanted something that would be both mythic and mundane,” says Awad of naming the object of her characters’ obsession. “I wanted it to be something you could find in the real world, but I wanted it to feel otherworldly.”
That description applies to Awad’s work generally — her dark fairy tales are firmly rooted in the familiar. They shock us into questioning common assumptions we may not have examined as critically as we should, whether she’s writing about a theatre professor living with chronic pain and attempting to stage a Shakespeare play that does not end well in “All’s Well,” or a grieving daughter’s journey into the dark side of beauty at the health spa her dead mother frequented in “Rouge.” Margaret Atwood is a fan; she’s called “Bunny” “sooo genius.”
While things frequently turn capital-G-Gothic and can be baroquely gory at times, Awad’s writing is also a delight to read: Chatty, gossipy, light as spun sugar. At least until, say, a rabbit the Bunnies turned into the young man of their collective dreams murders a frat boy at a Halloween party. That’s not a major spoiler, but it was another surprise for Awad, who didn’t see it coming until she was writing the scene.
“If you’re truly in someone’s consciousness, reporting from that place deep inside of them, you can get to the surreal so quickly,” Awad says. “Both the dreamy places, and the frightening places.”
Mona Awad’s Toronto
Favourite place to buy books: Queen Books, 914 Queen. St. E.
“I love that bookstore. The booksellers are so great, and I love that neighbourhood.”
Favourite place to read: Tango Palace Coffee Company, 1156 Queen St. E.
“I remember reading Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson there, and having such a revelation about how great it was. I still remember the way the light was falling on the book, and sitting in that wing chair.”
Favourite late night spot: Java House, 537 Queen St. W.
“It was such a hangout post-going dancing. I would always go there with my best friend and we would recap the evening.”
Favourite restaurant: Terroni, multiple locations
“I do love Terroni, mostly because my father loves it and we go there to celebrate things.”
Favourite neighbourhood to stroll: Trinity Bellwoods
“When the cherry blossoms are out, my favourite thing is to wander around there and just dream.”
Best people watching in the city: Queen West
“This is definitely dating me, because my heyday in Toronto was in the ‘90s. My best friend and I would get a pizza slice and we would just watch people and guess their lives.”
