Blue Hunger

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When she came up against something she didn’t know how to say, she fell silent and her face scrunched up until another concept surfaced. A moment in which the two images – the wicked fox and the amorous woman – no longer coincided, their edges separating like a deck of cards thrown on the floor. Di Grado’s emotional register mimics Garth Greenwell’s gorgeous study of sex and shame in What Belongs to You and Cleanness, in which queer bodies traverse public and private spaces. Di Grado imbues the corporeal mechanics of sex alongside sex as a form of “language-replacement”, something that supersedes verbal speech, creating a masterful narrative that conveys the ecstasy of new love: “It’s as if something inside me that had been fidgeting for so long had finally settled,” Ruben says. It is very personal, of course, but the ending felt like all the admirable work the author had done with such a bizarre story came utterly undone.

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We acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin nation, the tradition Blue Hunger asks how we create our identities and how we escape them; it is a fever-dream of a novel, visionary and uncanny, that demolishes all taboos and wisely explores, in a wildly imaginative language, the twisted peaks of loss and desire. Capita di sentirlo nelle tempie o nella punta formicolante delle dita - una turbolenza simile a uno sciame, a una corsa d'insetti nel buio - o nell'incavo sudato di un ginocchio.

Blue Hunger, the fifth novel from Italian author Viola Di Grado, follows Ruben – taking her dead brother’s name – as she navigates the cultural shift of her international escape, while still blindsided by her loss. When Ruben is overtaken by lust for the enigmatic Xu, when Ruben is fighting with Xu, when Ruben is regressing from her obsession with Xu—her brother (whose name she borrowed/stole) is in her mind. In luminous and startling prose, Viola Di Grado lays bare the risk inherent in human relationships, the capacity we have to inflict and enjoy pain as well as pleasure, and the disassembling power of grief. The way the narrator described the setting in China and Xu also seemed racist at times… If you’re looking for a wlw feel good romance this is not it. As I stepped out on to the dark street, and she handed her phone to the driver to pay, I touched my face to find a tear.

The skin defends itself, regenerates, and in regenerating forgets it was ever wounded' : gorgeously written, dense and rich, here the conceit of embodiment merges perfectly the unspoken with the textual. It details the unglamorous side to loss; losing the will to live, nihilism and the gross parts in between. Viola Di Grado scrive un romanzo cupo, incalzante, in equilibrio precario tra l’istinto di sopravvivere e il bisogno di sentirsi ancora vivi.The protagonist can’t help imagining Xu with other girls in the friendship group, and she constantly wants more of her lover, annoying her with her neediness and her desire to know more about her, to have more of her. It moves with a steady, compact agility, like a ship gesturing towards a mid-sea battle … The final scene is a spectacular feat, managing to be both unexpected, and exquisitely tender.