A Certain Hunger
"One of the most uniquely fun and campily gory books in my recent memory... A Certain Hunger has the voice of a hard-boiled detective novel, as if metaphor-happy Raymond Chandler handed the reins over to the sexed-up femme fatale and really let her fly." --The New York Times
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.
But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.
A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world's most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *A Certain Hunger* by Chelsea G. Summers is a provocative, darkly humorous novel with a striking, poetic writing style that many find memo...
The end where she couldn’t get engaged to Alex (the one man she loved) because she felt she’d loose herself is what makes my book of the year.
Seriously amazing and I already want to reread it
•Dorothy kills four men for reasons that amount to ego, entitlement, and boredom.
•She never grows, never questions herself, never contradicts her own mythology.
•The “big explanation” of why she is the way she is comes at the very end and is shallow, rushed, and generic.
•Emma’s letter + Dorothy’s reaction (“life is unfair because Emma gets to eat lunch outside prison”) actually makes Dorothy look even worse, which was a feat.
•The ending reinforces that she’s a narcissist who sees herself as the primary victim in a story where she’s the only predator.
•Her voice never stops sounding like a magazine profile of herself.
•The “confession” format collapses because she’s too self-conscious to confess anything real.
☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
Reading this book reminded me of one of my favorite Atwood poems: “Last year I abstained//this year I devour//without guilt//which is also an art.”
This book is fun, in a way that “The Tell-Tale Heart” is fun. I kept comparing Dorothy—our narrator—to the love child of Poe’s and the woman from “My Year of Rest and Relaxation.” You never forget she’s a murderous psychopath, but she offers a lot of humorous insights along the way (and similarly to Moshfegh’s character, Dorothy also only has one friend).
My absolute favorite part of this book was the writing style. It speaks a lot to the author that a story about cannibalism sounds so aesthetically pleasing on the page. I’ve heard similar statements about Nabokov’s “Lolita” (though I haven’t read it myself).
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.