Community Reviews
2/5 stars
A Certain Hunger follows food critic Dorothy Daniels, who also happens to be a cannibal, as she recounts her life and the murders she commited. In paper this sounds like the perfect combo, food metaphors and murdered with a sprinkling of sex, however this was a huge disappointment.
I love girlbosses. I have a full shelf dedicated to books like this, I worship at the altar of Gone Girl and I devour tales of murderous women just like Dorothy stuffs herself with human flesh. I thought I was going to live for this book, and, in fact, I quite enjoyed the first chapter and was fully on board after finishing the sample. The thing is that it ended up being a lot of nothing. It was all so empty and devoid of any spark or personality.
You cannot have a book driven by the deep thoughts and opinions of your main character and have her be so... dull. Not even the cannibalism could make her anything but empty. I did not like her, which is fine, there's no need to have a protagonist be likeable, but I also didn't dislike her nor was I horrified or intrigued by her actions. For a book that claims to "show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority" it ended up being very much about men and not enough about Dorothy. I actually quite liked the snippets of her relationship with her mother, they were far more interesting than the boring and vulgar relationships with men. I'm not a prude or offended in anyway, I'm just saying that the vulgarity sprouted in this book read like a child cursing behind their parents back. It got tired real quick.
Then there's the writing. It was a slog. Gigantic paragraphs with vocabulary that will make you reach for your dictionary every 5 words. I guess a positive is that this will expand your knowledge of the english language. Any chapter of this book goes: tale about a relationship, murder confession, stopping at the good bits and then 4 or so pages of rambling about uhh (spins roulette) prison food, descriptions of vaginas, some cock and cunt, ah yes back to the murder. It could not commit to a timeline or any semblance of structure.
tl;dr: too much sex, not enough literal flesh eating
...here's the thing about reading my memoir: it will make you feel good about yourself. You feel morally superior even as you identify with me. You slip into the supple skin of a cannibal for nearly three hundred pages, and enjoy it; then you can slough it off, go about your happy, moral business, and feel like you are a better person.
A Certain Hunger follows food critic Dorothy Daniels, who also happens to be a cannibal, as she recounts her life and the murders she commited. In paper this sounds like the perfect combo, food metaphors and murdered with a sprinkling of sex, however this was a huge disappointment.
I love girlbosses. I have a full shelf dedicated to books like this, I worship at the altar of Gone Girl and I devour tales of murderous women just like Dorothy stuffs herself with human flesh. I thought I was going to live for this book, and, in fact, I quite enjoyed the first chapter and was fully on board after finishing the sample. The thing is that it ended up being a lot of nothing. It was all so empty and devoid of any spark or personality.
You cannot have a book driven by the deep thoughts and opinions of your main character and have her be so... dull. Not even the cannibalism could make her anything but empty. I did not like her, which is fine, there's no need to have a protagonist be likeable, but I also didn't dislike her nor was I horrified or intrigued by her actions. For a book that claims to "show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority" it ended up being very much about men and not enough about Dorothy. I actually quite liked the snippets of her relationship with her mother, they were far more interesting than the boring and vulgar relationships with men. I'm not a prude or offended in anyway, I'm just saying that the vulgarity sprouted in this book read like a child cursing behind their parents back. It got tired real quick.
Then there's the writing. It was a slog. Gigantic paragraphs with vocabulary that will make you reach for your dictionary every 5 words. I guess a positive is that this will expand your knowledge of the english language. Any chapter of this book goes: tale about a relationship, murder confession, stopping at the good bits and then 4 or so pages of rambling about uhh (spins roulette) prison food, descriptions of vaginas, some cock and cunt, ah yes back to the murder. It could not commit to a timeline or any semblance of structure.
tl;dr: too much sex, not enough literal flesh eating
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