Andy Riley

This is the Italian translation of Andy Riley's "The Return of the Bunny Suicides" (though as most of the cartoons have no words not much translation is necessary). It is part plain daft, part rather sick, and part hilarious. I think the best one is probably the a bunny perched on a pinacle of Barad-Dur and shaking a large pepper pot over the eye of Sauron...

A series of cartoons of Rube Goldberg contraptions which, unlike Riley's most famous works, are not limited to helping bunnies commit suicide. Although this is not as funny as his Bunny Suicides books, it was quite amusing and worth a look. My favorite one was the automatic tree-planting Hummer that will ease the guilt you feel for destroying the environment.

So why do the bunnies want to commit suicide? What makes them spend all of their creative powers into creating Rube Goldberg machines that ultimately end in death to bunnies... The world wants to know. But, you won't find it in this book. Each cartoon shows a bunny, dying by a different way of suicide. Some by decapitation, others by being stabbed by a knife attached to gears... The cartoons are cute, but morbid. You are probably a bad person if you laugh (I did), but this is a great book show more for that person with a dark sense of humor. show less

If you want to make people curios, then naming your work "The Book of Bunny Suicides" is definitely an excellent starting point.

I, for example, instantly started thinking up various scenarios where the title would turn out to be some clever metaphor for one thing or another... Well, to be more accurate I pretended to come up with said clever things. Figures of speech and I have never really seen eye-to-eye, so all I can do is vaguely imitate the process of analyzing them. Briefly, because I show more get bored easily.

Imagine my surprise when I find out that the title of the book perfectly reflects its content. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, someone actually sat down and wrote down drew various scenarios of cute fluffy bunnies committing suicide.

There are a few ideas, that seem more comical than tragic. The vast majority of them however, are downright mean. The author must really despise those poor bunnies.

And since I don't know what else to say, I leave you with the scenario that left me pondering physics:

That's not how things should work. Or am I the only one whose window blinds are made of flimsy plastic?

Score: 3/5 because it feels like a brilliant(ly macabre) book. show less