Hunger by Elise Blackwell
Fiction Paperback
ISBN 13: 978-1-932961-50-8
5½ x 8¼ / 146 pages / $11.95
April 2008
Summary
Set during Hitler’s siege of Leningrad, Elise Blackwell’s beautiful debut novel is the deeply moving story of one man’s confrontation with his own morality. A scientist, but a man of powerful personal appetites, unexpectedly finds himself with a choice that is informed too much by his private hungers. The danger he faces is betraying not only the woman he loves but also the principles he holds most dear.
Praise
"An elderly Russian émigré reminisces about love in the shadow of war in this quietly effective, poignant debut. The opening chapters find the anonymous narrator ensconced in his New York apartment, waxing poetic about his life as a botanist during the siege of Leningrad, as he and his colleagues struggle to save the city's rare collection of plants in the botanical gardens. Deeply in love with his wife, Alena, another botanist, the narrator nonetheless embarks on a series of affairs, with a fellow worker named Lidia and with sexy, exotic Iskra. Both affairs become more difficult and tortured as the siege progresses and the city's population begins to starve. Blackwell wisely steers clear of the horrors that have been chronicled in many previous historical novels. Instead, she offers gemlike observations ('With Alena, who needed neither to find nor to lose herself, sex was only sex') and sensory detail ('one fat, perfect potato in salted water'). The juxtaposition of the gnawing torment of starvation with the narrator's memory of the exotic foods he collected and ate on his travels around the world before the war furnish the novel with many of its tensions and delights. Plot wise, there are some intriguing twists and turns as the war progresses . . . . This is a well-crafted novel that works largely because of its small, evocative moments." —Publishers Weekly
“Insightful and gripping. . . .Hunger examines both the limitations and the possibilities of the human character.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
“Exquisite. . . . [an] utterly devourable narrative . . . A compact embarrassment of riches.” —The Los Angeles Times
“In Elise Blackwell’s original and engrossing short novel, Leningrad during the German siege forms the background for an exploration of love and betrayal, as well as for some richly sensual evocations of the pleasures of eating.” —J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Laureate
Bio
Elise Blackwell 's short prose has appeared in Witness, Seed, Global City Review, Topic and other publications. Raised in southern Louisiana, she holds a BA from Louisiana State University and
an MFA from the University of California/Irvine. She is currently on the English faculty at the University of South Carolina. She is also the author of The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish and GRUB.