Listening to Nick Cave read ‘The Death of Bunny Munro’

Let’s say you’re a Nick Cave fan. Maybe not even a “fan,” but someone who owns and likes a couple of his records. You might not listen to him much anymore. If someone asked you why you like him, you might talk about that inimitable Australian voice of his. Or you might talk about his songwriting (which has bordered on story writing for most of his career) and the enduring cast of characters he has born - murderers and witnesses and bystanders to the scenes.

Or, if you’re the story-telling type, you would talk about the first time you really listened to a Nick Cave album. It was Tender Prey and you were single at the time, so no one was around to tell you to turn it down. You pulled a bottle of Bushmills out of the cabinet and listened to it over and over again, turning up the volume a little each time until you realized that Nick Cave just sounded best at 10, blaring so loud that your speakers were in a vague sort of danger. You don’t remember how many times you listened to the album that night, but you can recall how the repetition of songs like “The Mercy Seat” were every bit as intoxicating as the Bushmills. You remember waking up the next day with a splitting headache and the needle skipping at the end of the record.

Maybe that didn’t happen to you, but that’s exactly how I remember it.  When Nick Cave’s second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, came out earlier this year, I was interested but only vaguely. Have you ever tried to read Bob Dylan’s novel Tarantula? It doesn’t bode well for the musician to novelist crossover. Using that reference as judgment, I didn’t pick up the book and still haven’t.

But I did listen to the audiobook. The unabridged, eight hour long book-on-CD is a recording of Cave reading along with a soundtrack performed by him and Warren Ellis.