These escapades are teed up with arresting, comic lines: “Giovanni. One can’t help imagining the outcome of a date between Patrick Bateman and Dorothy Daniels, where a chainsaw would be no match for the wily and varied methods employed by the latter throughout the book. Others will revel in the campness, the gore, the brashness, and the clever gender reversal at the heart of A Certain Hunger. Here’s a sample (not the worst by far), where Dorothy describes semen “ on my belly like donut glaze”. Some readers won’t make it past the opening pages there is murder, cannibalism, graphic sex, lots of the c-word, and most nauseating of all, Summer’s delight in mixing sex and food metaphors. 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.įurther issues include a tendency to summarise an event before circling back to flesh out (pun intended) the details. These vibrant early chapters don’t quite gel with the rest of the narrative. This decision to tell rather than show lessens the dramatic impact at times, but for the most part the story is kept afloat through mordant humour and Summer’s ability to craft a decent sentence. The sardonic, confiding voice is perfectly suited to monologue. It makes sense that the book was first published in America as an Audible Original. The tone is satirical throughout, sustaining many ludicrous twists and turns. Dorothy is a 6ft-tall redhead whose voracious appetite, for sex, food, power and fame results in plenty of gossipy, drama-laced tales from a range of brightly drawn backdrops - a liberal arts college in Vermont, a year abroad in Italy, the staid nightlife of 1980s Boston, and by contrast, the hedonism of 1990s New York. Summers has great fun with her character. Over 19 titled chapters, with headings such as Corpse Reviver #2, Banana Bread and Silage, Dorothy writes down her story from prison, longing, like all good sociopaths, to go down in history for her terrible crimes. This approach is particularly effective when the character is someone who lives outside the confines of society, as is the case with the charming sociopathic narrator of Chelsea G Summers’ debut novel A Certain Hunger.ĭorothy Daniels, a well-known American food critic turned serial killer, is a year into a life sentence at Bedford Hills Prison in New York, after getting away with murder - and cannibalism - for decades. We learn to see the world through their eyes. Using a single point of view in a novel can heighten intensity, creating an immediate intimacy between character and reader.
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