There’s gristle in her toothsome tale. Dorothy has had certain other hungers too. The reader has become a willing victim, following her along, but finally she thrusts a metaphorical shiv: She did find love, near-perfect love, and it scared her nearly to death. “I like being by myself, you see. I just didn’t want to be alone. And now I never will be,” she says; now she’s in prison for life. a b c d Silverberg, Amy (2020-12-01). "Why Can't Women Be Serial Killers, Too?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 2020-12-02. this is the most white feminist book i've ever read. it was racist, grotesque, classist, antisemitic, and added nothing to any of the conversations it was desperately trying to grab onto.

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy’s clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both. Dorothy Daniels has all the time in her hand because she is literally in a prison pen on her “gastronomic journey” where she travels around the whole hunting for the best kosher meat to truffle to men…. to eat. Umm yes. To eat. She loves well cooked perfectly seasoned prime rib and brisket of her old lover. I don’t mind reading from the POV of a psychopath, but it’s a sin to force your reader to endure the POV of a *boring* psychopath. Dorothy describes herself as a “howling void” and the point is that she doesn’t have a soul, but it’s more appropriate because she doesn’t have a personality. She expresses the same three ideas ad nauseum until the very, very end when she says one thing that could have been a sustainable thesis for this book. But again, it wasn’t developed. i am also sure all the sex she loves telling the reader about having also feeds into this idea, but i have little interest in the sex lives of others, even less so in that of those who brag about it. for me, this makes this book read even more like a trashy novel with a 20-something protagonist. which might explain why it's so popular on tiktok). There is something inside Dorothy that makes her different from everybody else. Something she’s finally ready to confess. But beware: her story just might make you wonder how your lover would taste sautéed with shallots and mushrooms and deglazed with a little red wine.In my jejune imagination, my dream lovers were uniform, each as beautiful, masculine, and replaceable as an Arrow shirt model. Really, what does a twelve-year-old know about men. To a girl, a man of thirty is impossibly old, if inconceivably desirable and infinitely replaceable. At twelve, my lust was little more than a vague mauve ache nestled in my cotton panties. I knew that lust was a dangerous thing, but I wanted these men to lust for me because, even though I didn’t know the precise shape and weight of lust, I knew that lust was power—and I wanted power even then.

dorothy then goes on a victim tirade of how brutally women are treated in the justice system and how brutal everyone is to her. emma, being a weirdo just like dorothy, allows dorothy to assault her (almost) and get away with it. A Certain Hunger,” Chelsea G. Summers’ debut novel, requires some chewing, and that is mostly — as Martha Stewart would put it — a good thing. Meet Dorothy Daniels, now 50-something and incarcerated at Bedford Hills, the supposedly upscale women’s prison in Connecticut where Stewart also did time, albeit for a different crime. Dorothy has a lot to say and at times her tangents about truffle hunting, prison cuisine and acrobatic love-making threaten to distract from the juicy marrow of her confessions.this is a book about a female food critic (rad) who has a lot of sex (rad) and sometimes murders and eats men (admit it: also rad).

similarly, the meandering thoughts of the characters, the randomly sprinkled "truisims" about life, love, etc. are meant to be "deep" - you can tell they are - but since they do not say anything of substance, both the book and the character come off as self-important and superficial. dorothy is the most bland character i have ever read. ever. and i read the bell jar, so that's saying something. If I’d known what I was getting into, I wouldn’t have started. Thank goodness I didn’t know, though, because, in ways that are hard to describe, Summers is a brilliant prose stylist.

Chelsea G. Summers

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. a b c Livingstone, Josephine (2020-11-18). "When the Protagonist Is a Literal Man-Eater". The New Republic. ISSN 0028-6583 . Retrieved 2020-12-02. Reading about murder hasn’t ever been my hard point; but combining food and cannibalism reminded me of Bones’s serial killer; Gormogon 🫣

Using a single point of view in a novel can heighten intensity, creating an immediate intimacy between character and reader. We learn to see the world through their eyes. This approach is particularly effective when the character is someone who lives outside the confines of society, as is the case with the charming sociopathic narrator of Chelsea G Summers’ debut novel A Certain Hunger.Though perhaps she knows I’d never approve the visit and she’s merely applying to toy with me. That’s not a possibility I’m willing to indulge, on the off chance that she appears some Sunday afternoon, dripping Vivienne Westwood and Guerlain Nahema. I don’t even open Emma’s letters.) let's take the theme of murder and cannibalism, for example. the novel chooses to depict the murder that ends up sending dorothy to jail, as well as her four cases of cannibalism. she mentions several more murders she has committed as a side note. the novel discussed the why of cannibalism but for the murders, it gives little reason other than girlbossism (because women can be serial killers, too!). this cheapens the former - and it is a shame because i felt like the novel was truly on the precipice of saying something interesting and fascinating about it. dorothy states this towards the end of the novel in one of the most confessional, intimate moments (and i know its placing there is deliberate. please. it is probably one of the few writing choices that feels truly deliberate.). and this moment serves, explicitly, as the true thesis of the book. it is the reason why dorothy devours the men that she sees as integral to her identity. not just because women can be serial killer too, can commit despicable too - but because of something entirely human, taken to an extreme. Okay, this book is about a woman embracing her inner self after decades of putting a lid on it... and so much more graphic. It's filled with dry humour, unhínged character behaviour and food getting in the middle of Dorothy's undoing, BUT it's addictive.