A Certain Hunger Review
I’m simply a queer woman who believes fine dining is being able to afford McDonald’s on the weekend
⭐⭐⭐ 3/5
‘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.‘
Those sentences should make it pretty obvious why I was desperate to get my hands on a copy of Chelsea G. Summers’ A Certain Hunger. What they don’t make obvious is why, by the time I finally reached the last page of the novel, I could only give it 3 out of 5 stars. Now, I didn’t start this blog to become a cynical critic so I am not about to spend 800 words tearing the novel apart. Instead, I want to work through why it didn’t work for me and perhaps echo the thoughts of those too afraid to speak against a book that has gained a fierce following.
It was my podcast co-host who first made me aware of A Certain Hunger. She told me there was a novel out there written from the perspective of a food critic whose acquired taste would turn most stomachs. Dorothy Daniels is voracious, adventurous and a cannibal. Yes, that’s right. Dorothy’s dish of choice is her male lovers. A Certain Hunger asks the question, ‘Why can’t women be serial killers, too?’ but, in my opinion, doesn’t offer enough substance to leave us satisfied with the answer.
I am an avid believer in never judging a book by its cover (especially considering the UK release only got the off-putting lime green version) but I do believe it’s fair to judge a book by its first page. There is no denying that the narrative structure of A Certain Hunger successfully intrigues you but I should have heeded my own advice when the first page made it clear what the style of writing would be.
What drew me in at the beginning was the mise-en-scene/dramatic irony of it all. Personally, I adore books dripping in dramatic irony so a novel that starts at the end and then slowly unravels through the narrator’s retelling is my ideal story structure. For an opening chapter of a cannibalistic serial killer’s memoir, it’s quite tame but who wants to give everything away in the beginning? And anyway, I hadn’t bought a copy of this book because I love reading vivid descriptions of brutal crimes. Like most, I imagine, I have been swept up in the recent wave of unlikeable female characters and was ready to add another to my library.
The reason I still gave A Certain Hunger 3 stars is because it did things I had yet to read in a modern-day novel. At the time of writing her memoir (as the book is framed to be), Dorothy is in her 50s which offers an interesting look back on the evolution of writing as a profession. There is also no effort made to make Dorothy an empathetic character which most of the time I loved. Other times it was difficult to move past her holier-than-thou outlook on life but I felt that was Summers’ aim when writing the character as such.
The truth is, what I expected from A Certain Hunger was a gory, camp and slightly unhinged delve into femininity, feminism and feverish hunger (of both the body and the mind). While A Certain Hunger definitely dips its toe into those topics, it’s possibly the novel’s biggest strength that I found to be its greatest weakness. Summers’ does an excellent job of establishing Dorothy’s tone of voice. If you were ever to show me an excerpt from A Certain Hunger then I would instantly be able to recognise it.
From the first page, we are made acutely aware that Dorothy Daniels is an established and high-profile food critic. The problem is that she never lets us forget this even for a single page. The word choices Summers’ uses to convey Dorothy’s character are carefully curated but they are also what took me out of the story. Whether it’s actual food, a man’s tongue or sex, Dorothy uses a slew of pretentious food analogies to paint a picture in the reader’s mind. The problem for me was that this reader has never even heard of most of the food, no matter know what it looks or tastes like.
Food analogies aside, A Certain Hunger is written with a level of intelligence that makes for some killer passages. The matter-of-fact way in which Dorothy talks about her crimes - and cannibalism in general - really sits with you and is what pulled me back into the novel every time I thought about putting it down. But, for me, this style of writing did not work outside of these passages. Of course, it makes sense that a woman serving life in prison would romanticise the food she once lived for but after a few chapters, it became a little overdone.
It’s hard to say if I would recommend this book. Throughout this year, I have devoured book after book but A Certain Hunger was hard for me to swallow. It’s a memoir dedicated to Dorothy’s love of rich men and rich food and I’m simply a queer woman who believes fine dining is being able to afford McDonald’s on the weekend.
Originally published on WordPress on September 30th 2022
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