Bunny and Shark

by Alisha Piercy

Plunging into the first thirteen days after the 'bastard' pushes his ex- Playboy wife 'Bunny' over a cliff in the Caribbean, BUNNY AND SHARK is a fable about island survival and the perils of being exiled from one's identity. Literally lost at sea, Bunny is fueled by the miracle of having been saved from sharks by a band of dolphins. Her continued survival depends on her ability to become a spiritual extension of the landscape: she is the mood of the ocean at night as she swims blindly in it and the protective coolness of the jungle by day; the close-walled refuge of the sailboats anchored in the harbour and the sparkling deck of an opulent super yacht when, transformed, she makes a triumphant return to her former world. Introducing one of the great heroines of contemporary fiction, BUNNY AND SHARK takes readers on a voyage intense with abandon in a story that invokes more than a little bit of magic in the telling.

Genres: Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2014

Reviews

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

bizarre in the most wonderful way!

[Tan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An ex-playboy bunny gets pushed off a cliff. What happens next is a damned funny story.

[Jacqueline Valencia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look for my review soon in Broken Pencil Magazine.

[grae · Rating 3 out of 5]

quick read, pretty interesting writing style. i enjoyed the second person pov — i don’t often read books written like this, it gives a more personal approach to a story not many could truly relate to (i mean, i’m no playboy bunny). personally, the mentions of body checking that mainly occur in the first half triggered me a bit, but i understand that to her, a “perfect” (white standard, male gaze centric) body is everything. very beautiful descriptors of land and ocean, i too would feel so special if a group of dolphins saved my life.

[Edwin Lang · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found Bunny and Shark to be an entertaining and enjoyable story briefly told in fourteen chapters across 157 pages of a woman rejected. On one hand it is a fable and then again we are not sure whether Bunny, thrown into the ocean from some Caribbean cliff by her lover is alive: whether this is nothing more than the last flurry of consciousness before she drowns or dies when eaten by a shark. There is a surreal element to the story and one point in my reading I called the writing an act of the imagination. I liked it though. I used to be a member of the Playboy Club in Montreal and often had taken my wife there for we enjoyed its elegance, good entertainment, good food and overall ambience: it had class, was fun and paradoxically was low-key and inviting. One time she was close to nine months pregnant, and it was one of the most fun times we had: the Bunnies were pros throughout.


In an interview with Malcolm Sutton (Lemon Hound) Alisha Piercy says ‘The Bunnies from the ‘80’s I’ve known are astute, resourceful …” and I agree, and that’s how I recall them too. Like the word ‘liberal’ in the United States, connotations have become associated with words such as ‘Bunny” that mercilessly deprive the concepts of any dignity, in this case perhaps thanks to Gloria Steinman’s 1963 reportage, Bunny has a sexual meaning I don’t recall it ever being imbued with before.


The Bunny in this story seemed to have retained the superficial glamour girl image though that we now associate as having its source in the ‘Playboy Machine’ Alisha Piercy in the interview) and her near-death experience seemed to be an awakening. It seems though she knows only the Bastard’s shady business so it’s going to be a rather rude awakening with a long hard road ahead. The tale was endearing and Alisha Piercy get us to care about Bunny and root for her. I for one hoped she would indeed blow up the Bastard and his boat, that the author would indulge us in some Mickey Spillane Vengeance is Mine fantasy: Piercy unfortunately is too young yet, too well behaved, perhaps too forgiving: that is, she’s a Canadian through and through.


The story happened over thirteen days – too short for a real transformation – and only time enough for her to emerge a little from the shock that must have engulfed her. Piercy though had Bunny become the fly on the wall and I liked that as it had enabled her and us to observe, in effect, her own self amid the lives of others in their abundance, superficiality, criminality, deceit. The book was too short to explore how her transformation might ultimately unfold, what characters would become central to her new life, and overall it was single dimensional focused picture of one’s aging woman’s survival in a place she had thought comfortably and confidently as home and now for whom it had become alien territory. She had in an instant become a refugee, dependent on the mercy of fate for her safety and survival. In this she was lucky, not to have starved, to have had access to unlocked boats, to the Caribbean waters remaining early on predator free. In this Bunny and Shark was a good metaphor for our own comfortable world: until a spouse leaves, a child dies, a job disappears, one’s health vanishes. In this sense Bunny’s story is everyone’s, in this case with a spin that she had once been beautiful and now wasn’t so much anymore, enjoyed great wealth (and had not really asked or cared for where it came from), lived a comfortable and thoughtless life – read little and, as the book implied, cared for others little. She was in other words a rather bad Bunny, eminently expendable. We liked her and hoped the best for her of course but then again Bastard never got to tell his side of the story. But there am I being a man, wanting to hear the guy’s version. Lacking that doesn’t detract from Bunny and Shark: it remains a readable and thought-provoking book.

And who or what is Shark anyways?

Edwin

[Alison DeLory · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book interesting in form and story arc. Bunny, our main character, is tossed to the sharks (literally) for reaching middle age and just because her partner is bored of her. As it's told in second person, Bunny becomes "you" so as a reader the urge to identify as Bunny is rather in your face. Being in her age bracket, but never obsessed about or having made my living off my looks (Bunny is an ex Playboy bunny; I most definitely am not), I thought about what a tenuous and dangerous trap that is. The book is surprisingly feminist (or perhaps post- post- feminist?) and we root for Bunny as she redefines herself. It's a short book but good length for second person, and doesn't attempt to answer all the questions it poses which I like. Don't expect a neat finish, either. It's vulgar in parts and an exposé on life's potential for excessiveness and trappings.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

An odd book... I actually bought it because I liked the look of it so much (Bookthug makes lovely books). It's the story of a woman horribly betrayed by her husband, and her semi-magical comeback. Along the way there are loads of insights about beauty, power, glamour, rejection, and revenge. Oddly, not a book which is overtly about gender or race, though both are key themes. The plot is extremely well crafted; the main character has a fabulous arc, but everyone else in the book is a set piece.

[Eddie · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can lead Barbie to water, but you can't get rid of her that easily. She swims better than you realize, she can lose body parts, fuck her hair up, and still take the cake and wash it down with his champagne. Oh she'll be back, she'll climbs onto that yacht like a wooden Cinderella. The bastard can't stop her now!

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm afraid this novel doesn't do anything for me, except leave me scratching my head. There is an artistry present to the presentation of what I will call "mental blunt force trauma", but otherwise this is a novel that I put on the shelf, side-by-side with "The Sound and the Fury", under the label of "what on earth was that all about". It's only 150 pages long, but getting through it left me feeling like I was trampling through an endless jungle. Sadly, this is not something I'm going to revisit.