A Certain Hunger: Chelsea G. Summers

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So, I ding this a star (or maybe just half a star) for falling short as gripping narrative, but that’s almost beside the point.

One mark of psychopaths, or so I’ve learned, is that we calculate an action’s personal benefits before we take it, and it benefits me to proclaim my psychopathy, both in prison and out of it. Here at Bedford Hills, my psychopathy earns me a wide berth. There in the world, my psychopathy sells better than sex—and sex plus psychopathy, well, that’s a heady delight. Shaw-Ellis, Daisy; Weir, Keziah (December 2, 2020). "The Books and Totes That Will Get You Through This Winter". Vanity Fair . Retrieved 2020-12-02.this is particularly egregious when it comes to the descriptions and discussion of cannibalism. i wouldn't have minded a casual tone from a psychopath, i would not expect anything else from commercial fiction. but this sanitised writing style somehow strips an inherently transgressive act off of its transgressiveness.

Dorothy will get to the circumstances of her arrest in good time, but she lets us know at once about her passion (food of all kinds), profession (restaurant critic) and obsession (cannibalism). This is hardly new in our literature; from Jonathan Swift’s “ A Modest Proposal” to Hannibal Lecter’s penchant for liver to the unforgettable scene in “ The Road” and even the crazed parody of the French film “ Delicatessen,” the notion of eating human flesh has simultaneously attracted and repelled bookish tastes for centuries. Silverberg notes too that A Certain Hunger is "also a history of the internet, and how it has democratized writing and ‘steamrolled the playing field’ of criticism broadly." [4] Style [ edit ] well, this wasn't very good. i cannot even give if "good for her" points since there was nothing enjoyable to it. the main character was not simply unlikeable - which would have been fine - but completely insufferable by way of being both self-important and vapid.

A Certain Hunger

Other times it’s a more sustained academic critique. As she meditates at one point, “I could never be a mass murderer. Mass murder is gauche. Mass murder is to serial killing as McDonald’s is to Peter Luger. Both establishments serve chopped beef, but one is indiscriminate to the point of ubiquity whereas the other is carnal dining at its bespoke finest.” here's how dorothy got caught, by the way: the supposedly intelligent psychopath threw away a receipt near the crime scene and forgot that trash cans don't magically melt when near a fire, unless they themselves are on fire. yet again, either a plothole or another showing of her stupidity, though i don't know which one makes me want to scream more. i get that chelsea, by showing dorothy deny alex's proposal, is trying to show that dorothy chose herself instead of alex and a life with alex, that she chose to remain who she is instead of becoming "just his wife", but in reality, all it shows is that she decided to destroy her and his life out of a pitiful desire to be unique. which, by the way, she very much is not.