A Certain Hunger: Chelsea G. Summers

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Any carnivore will tell you: Sometimes you enjoy a cut of meat more for its flavor than its tenderness. A rich bavette steak, a crisply fried pig’s ear, a long-simmered mutton roast. here's what i think was one of the worst things this book, and by extension the author chelsea, did:

this is the most white feminist book i've ever read. it was racist, grotesque, classist, antisemitic, and added nothing to any of the conversations it was desperately trying to grab onto.

Chelsea G. Summers

A Certain Hunger,” Chelsea G. Summers’ debut novel, requires some chewing, and that is mostly — as Martha Stewart would put it — a good thing. Meet Dorothy Daniels, now 50-something and incarcerated at Bedford Hills, the supposedly upscale women’s prison in Connecticut where Stewart also did time, albeit for a different crime. Dorothy has a lot to say and at times her tangents about truffle hunting, prison cuisine and acrobatic love-making threaten to distract from the juicy marrow of her confessions.

Okay, this book is about a woman embracing her inner self after decades of putting a lid on it... and so much more graphic. It's filled with dry humour, unhínged character behaviour and food getting in the middle of Dorothy's undoing, BUT it's addictive. One minute she’s enjoying the pleasures of her lover's tongue, next minute she’s roasting it. It was dark and depraved and I really enjoyed the insight into her mind and memoirs from her prison cell.the entire concept of dorothy having a meltdown and starting to blame emma makes absolutely no sense. dorothy was suspected way before she ever even POSSIBLY told emma anything, at all. so that entire plot point is either a huge plot hole by chelsea or it's yet again another example of how stupid dorothy is. Summers, Chelsea G (2019-03-09). "How to Write a Novel (and Heal Your Ravaged Heart)". Medium . Retrieved 2020-12-02. In The New York Times, Silverberg noted the book's noir style, saying, " 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." [4] i am also sure all the sex she loves telling the reader about having also feeds into this idea, but i have little interest in the sex lives of others, even less so in that of those who brag about it. for me, this makes this book read even more like a trashy novel with a 20-something protagonist. which might explain why it's so popular on tiktok). These vibrant early chapters don’t quite gel with the rest of the narrative. Summers is careful to present Dorothy’s path to murderous cannibal as incremental — the first killing is an accident, the second for revenge until it becomes something of an addiction — but there is still a mismatch in tone and style, where the early chapters feel real, like lived experience, and the latter entirely fictional.

A Conversation With Chelsea G. Summers, Author Of 'A Certain Hunger' ". Audible.com. December 10, 2019 . Retrieved December 2, 2020.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 for these reasons, i unshelved it as lit fic halfway through - try as it might, this is more general-fiction-beach-read than it likes to admit.

this is particularly egregious when it comes to the descriptions and discussion of cannibalism. i wouldn't have minded a casual tone from a psychopath, i would not expect anything else from commercial fiction. but this sanitised writing style somehow strips an inherently transgressive act off of its transgressiveness. Book Genre: Adult, Adult Fiction, Contemporary, Feminism, Fiction, Horror, Literary Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Thriller, Womens 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. A Certain Hunger is a gripping monologue-style story that follows the life of Dorothy Daniels, a tenacious and passionate food critic. Despite her success in her career and love life, Dorothy's true mystery lies in her hidden identity as a serial killer. After discovering her insatiable hunger for taking lives, she becomes unstoppable in her pursuit of feeding this urge.Then it just kept going on like that with the same flow of popping in and out of timelines, present to memory montage and I got really frustrated. I just wanted to know how she planned on ending her next lovers. Dorothy Daniels has all the time in her hand because she is literally in a prison pen on her “gastronomic journey” where she travels around the whole hunting for the best kosher meat to truffle to men…. to eat. Umm yes. To eat. She loves well cooked perfectly seasoned prime rib and brisket of her old lover. 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.