Tracks through the wasteland

Sex, and plenty of it. That’s certainly what Bunny Munro — the titular protagonist of Nick Cave’s second novel — wants. And, in a roundabout way, he gets it. In the very first chapter, he’s cheating on his wife with a prostitute; in the second, it’s a hotel waitress; in the third, he’s given to fantasies about Kylie Minogue; in the fourth … well, you get the picture. Throw in the fact that Bunny is a travelling cosmetics salesman in Brighton, and it starts to sound like one of those dreadful Robin Askwith comedies from the 1970s — you know, Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

But The Death of Bunny Munro isn’t actually a mindless, priapic romp. Far from it. There’s a sickliness and a pallor to the world Bunny inhabits which makes the book a fairly unnerving read. This is a drama composed of tower blocks, cocaine, Teletubbies, rohypnol, cheap perfume, Butlins, cancer and blood. It’s at once familiar, grotesque and otherworldly. Think of it as what EastEnders would be like if it were directed by David Lynch. Or like a typical issue of Viz.

One thing’s for sure: this novel’s grimy contours suit the era in which we live. At times, it reads like a study — or, in its more acerbic moments, a bestiary — of the credit crunch generation. There’s a hopelessness, a resignation, about Cave’s eccentric cast of drunks, nymphos, freaks and chancers. And who can blame them? Every page you turn to seems to contain some example of social or economic degradation. From family breakdown to ASBO teenagers, from anger to despair, this is a snapshot of Dysfunctional Modern Britain — taken, as it happens, by an Australian who now lives over here.