Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler
My rating: 3/5 cats
five stars cats for INtent, three stars cats for CONtent.
so the premise of this book is that an anorexic teenage girl is chosen to fill the office of Famine. yeah, Famine—as in four horsemen of the apocalypse Famine. that one. awesome, right? as someone who de-voured all of piers anthony’s “incarnations of immortality” books as a teen, this is right up my alley. (incidentally—for fans of that series—did you even know that a “new” one came out a few years ago that he self-published?? Under a Velvet Cloak not many people know about it, so i use this space to share.)
so i am sold on the premise.
it’s the execution that troubles me.
things that make me unhappy:
-Death is played by kurt cobain. i don’t have to explain why this is uncool, do i? good.
-remember what i said about the impressive swear-manipulation in anna dressed in blood?? this is exactly the opposite. this is punch-pulling, cutesy “cursing” that makes me hate being in the character’s head. it is not that i don’t like that she doesn’t curse, it is that she overuses fake cursery. nearly every page feels like it has:
-it really was freaking cool
-how freaking awesome was that?
-and he freaking terrified her.
and it isn’t like the character is talking to anyone, so—what, she just blurts out grandma-safe ejaculations in her head? for her own amusement? unlikely. if you don’t have anything cool to say, don’t say anything at all.
the third problem i had is how facile this is, not in its treatment of anorexia, which is better done than in many books, but in its treatment of world hunger. the idea of an anorexic girl becoming famine is a fun ironic conceit, but the “reality” of a book about a privileged white girl with her first-world anorexia traveling to distant impoverished lands to single-handedly end world hunger makes me squirm.
the anorexia parts are good, though. better than a lot of novels i have read on the topic. there is a scene where another character is going through her bulimia ritual that gave me goosebumps. it is so so horrifying. and if this had just been some extended starvation-induced hallucination where a young girl finally sees herself in a larger context of the world’s problems and overcomes her own psychological disorder, that would be fine. a little trite, but not terrible.
but it’s not.
so i am kind of torn about this. on the one hand—death playing a guitar and singing nirvana ditties really displeases me. on the other hand—there is a good book about anorexia buried beneath all the trappings. i will probably read the next book (it is WAR), but when the Death volume comes out, i might give it a pass.
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