sex, death, and duck confit - a review of "A Certain Hunger" by Chelsea G Summers

 GENERAL T/W - Cannibalism

Once again, I find myself reading a novel that demands to occupy a significant part of my mind. Unlike A Little Life, however, Chelsea G Summers' A Certain Hunger did not inspire sadness or melancholy. It did, however, also trigger a significant amount of introspection. 

I read this book almost entirely on the train, on my way to and from university. I find the train to be the most introspective place to read - there's something about being perceived as a Reader in public (the capital 'R' here is important; it is one thing to be a reader - or someone who reads - and another entirely to be a Reader - or someone who reads on trains, someone who wants to be seen and understood as a reader) that has always made me really consider myself and my own performativity. This is, of course, a book about a psychopathic mass-murdering cannibal. This is a book where a woman kills (in various, and generally violent ways) her male lovers (often just after or even during sex) and then eats them (as key ingredients in increasingly decadent ways). However, I feel, more deeply, that it is an exploration of femininity, of the connections between sexual desire, death, and indulgences.

Dorothy is an intentionally indulgent woman - she has no qualms about following the path her desire takes her. She is not a slave to her desire (as she seems to view men as being to theirs'), but rather like an owner allowing their particularly persistent dog to tug at the leash in order to sniff a tree trunk. Throughout the book, her greatest weapon is love (a sexual, occasionally taboo kind of love); it is how she finds her victims, how her victims trust her, and why she kills them in the first place. However, it is a different kind of love that becomes her undoing; her only lasting true friendship, a platonic love - and with another woman - which she can therefore not entirely trust; without the sexual element, without the maleness, Dorothy can never full trust Emma, and therefore is entirely convinced of her betrayal. A betrayal that never happened.

I will admit, I struggled with parts of this text. I found it too graphic, and increasingly vulgar, and just hard to swallow (pun intended). However, upon reflection, I believe that this is the point - she is, after all, a psychopath, and a cannibal, and to truly understand her (and fear her, judge her, identify with her, whatever she makes you feel), the story must be as honest, as brutal as possible. If not, the narrative would not back the same punch, it would not make you think, and question as it does.

As I said, this book made me introspective; it made me consider desire and death (and why are so often paired together), it made me consider why it is that we refuse to see women as violent creatures, capable of committing horrors (not just enduring them). This book is a thinker, it's a fascinator, it's pretty gross. However, I think it is well worth the read.