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 ... Is the voice inviting? Sure, as inviting as a kidnapper holding a knife to your throat and threatening ... The descriptions of violence and gourmet cuisine are so visceral that I felt alternatingly hungry and sick to my stomach ... With Summers’s writing, I kept rereading sentences only as a double take, whispering to myself, 'Man, this lady is screwed up' — which is, I’d argue, its own kind of pleasure ... Don’t get me wrong, A Certain Hunger is not just a novel about the demise of a foodie serial killer. It’s also a history of the internet, and how it has democratized writing ... There’s a feminist argument, too, beneath the lyrical exaltations about sex with Italian men and cooking with duck fat ... there was also something soothing and escapist about reading a fictional villain’s story, especially at a time when real life feels like its own horror show.
For those who can stomach it, A Certain Hunger, by Chelsea G. Summers is a macabre banquet of a suspense novel, serving up carnal and gustatory surprises. Ultimately, you may be disgusted with yourself — as I was — for devouring this morally repugnant tale with such gusto, but reading, like eating is a hard activity to regulate once the appetites are aroused ... Dorothy speaks like Humbert Humbert and behaves like Hannibal Lecter. It’s that Humbert-like voice — the flair for fresh imagery, ornate vocabulary and sly humor —that lures readers into this vile debut novel ... A Certain Hunger is distasteful, but it’s also naughty, witty and inventive. It may leave a bad taste in your mouth, but — unlike the slew of Gone Girl knockoffs that clog the offerings of suspense fiction these days — it won’t bore you.
It was the 'semeny chowder' that did it for me. That was the moment I realized Chelsea G. Summers’ new novel, A Certain Hunger, went to the place we, Bon Appétit, and I, writer lady, never go. A place where sex and food entwine so grossly and explicitly that it makes you laugh, scream, and need a drink as stiff as this innuendo. This book is crazy. You have to read it ... Summers does a pitch-perfect impression of the highfalutin restaurant critic amped up on expensed rib eye and good Barolo, intoxicated by adjectives ... It’s American Psycho meets Ruth Reichl’s Save Me the Plums. Summers’ knife is twisted in Bret Easton Ellis’s book spine ... A Certain Hunger will have you thinking about the taste of human flesh deglazed in red wine, which feels like a nearly illegal sentence to write. Go to the dark place and let it rattle you.
... requires some chewing, and that is mostly — as Martha Stewart would put it — a good thing ... This obviously ironic blitheness in fact calls back to Sondheim and Swift, who invoked cannibalism to drive home dark moral fables — though here it’s larded with an M.F.K. Fisher level of savory detail ... Sometimes Dorothy takes too long a walk to such hard-hitting truths. But there is more to her stories than cold disquisitions or horrific self-caricature ... There’s gristle in her toothsome tale ... A comic novel, a horror novel, a feminist novel and a moral novel of a kind, A Certain Hunger will sate yours — at least for entertainment.
The chapter titles function as thrilling set pieces, but together they shape the story and, like a food blog with a thousand words before getting to the recipe, create powerful suspense, even as the recursive storytelling reveals the gory outcomes from the start ... Through scenes of vibrant sex and vivid violence, author Chelsea G. Summers refuses handholding as well ... Easy to summarize but difficult to, um, flesh out, A Certain Hunger, is, without a doubt, the Great American Female Serial Killer Novel, The Great Gatsby of women cannibal foodie satirical black comic memoirs. That it's also the only one is a testimony to its inventiveness, but that's beside the point ... Summers has found a novel way to intertwine horror and violence with our monstrous consumption.
A Certain Hunger is not a horror novel or a thriller but more like a symbolic comedy determined to make the whole 'ironic misandry' schtick into something complicated and engaging ... I’m sure a handful of readers will find A Certain Hunger insulting to their masculinity, or misread it as a Satanic call to feminists everywhere to spatchcock their husbands. But most readers will find Summers to be a writer in charge of compelling new powers, and the sheer absence of guilt or remorse in Dorothy a refreshing antidote to the anxious moral calculus so popular in much contemporary fiction. A Certain Hunger is a swaggering, audacious debut, and a celebration of all the wet, hot pleasures of human contact.
In a culture that fetishizes male power, the heroine of A Certain Hunger is a rapacious, bloodthirsty monster—a perversion of every male fear ... the book is sometimes overwhelming. Its layered descriptions distract from its plot: with so many images on the table, characters are lost ... A Certain Hunger is a hearty novel that, despite its graphic themes of murder, flesh eating, sex, and the dessert menu, is also quite funny. With direct jabs at toxic masculinity and razor-sharp awareness of feminist tropes, Chelsea G. Summers’s novel is a slasher-sexy, rich satire.
Presented as a prison memoir, this tale is narrated by the funny and astute Dorothy Daniels, a food critic who just happens to be an unrepentant cannibalistic serial killer ... The psychopathic, darkly feminist antihero can be viewed as a big middle finger to the common practice of judging a female protagonist on her 'likability' or 'relatability.' ... You won’t soon forget Dorothy or her delicious insights, but fair warning: This book might turn you into a vegetarian, if you aren’t already. (Though as Dorothy herself acknowledges, 'It’s surprisingly easy to overcome moral qualms, if you give in to the appetite.')
Summers debuts with the fiendishly entertaining account of the rise and fall of Dorothy Daniels, a successful food writer and convicted murderer ... Despite Daniels’s crimes, she is a consistently appealing companion. With graphic sex and violence, Summers’s shocking and darkly funny novel reads like a feminist-horror version of American Psycho.
Part culinary travelogue, part campy horror, Summers’ debut is nothing if not wholly original. Though at times it can become a little tiresome reading from the point of view of a full-blown sociopath, the book offers a perspective hardly explored: that of a woman who's not just angry, but violent. In a literary canon rife with novels glorifying sadistic men, that alone is worth applauding. Unabashedly and full-heartedly living out her id, Dorothy balances her most revolting qualities with a caustic wit, a kind of wink and a nod to readers when things get ghastly that it’s all in good fun. After all, she argues, 'Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.'
