{ "item_title" : "What Hunger", "item_author" : [" Catherine Dang "], "item_description" : "One of Goodreads, Book Riot, and AV Club's Most Anticipated Horror Novels of the Year Incendiary...this one hits hard. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) - Intense, visceral, and not to be missed. --Booklist (starred review) - A tour de force. --Capes and Tights A haunting coming-of-age tale following the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, Ronny Nguyen, as she grapples with the weight of generational trauma while navigating the violent power of teenage girlhood, for fans of Jennifer's Body and Little Fires Everywhere. It's the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, dozing off to trashy magazines on a plastic lawn chair. In stark contrast stands her brother Tommy, the pride and joy of their immigrant parents: a popular honor student destined to be the first in the family to attend college. The thought of Tommy leaving for college fills Ronny with dread, as she contemplates the quiet house she will be left alone in with her parents, Me and Ba. Their parents rarely speak of their past in Vietnam, except through the lens of food. The family's meals are a tapestry of cultural memory: thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem chua, and steaming bowls of pho tái with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, Me and Ba taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted. But when tragedy strikes, Ronny's world is upended. Her sense of self and her understanding of her family are shattered. A few nights later, at her first high school party, a boy crosses the line, and Ronny is overtaken by a force larger than herself. This newfound power comes with an insatiable hunger for raw meat, a craving that is both a saving grace and a potential destroyer. What Hunger is a visceral, emotional journey through the bursts and pitfalls of female rage. Ronny's Vietnamese lineage and her mother's emotional memory play a crucial role in this tender ode to generational trauma and mother-daughter bonding.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/66/806/557/1668065576_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "27.99", "online_price" : "27.99", "our_price" : "27.99", "club_price" : "27.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "27.99" } }

Overview

Customers Also Bought

Details

Early in Catherine Dang’s What Hunger, Veronica Nguyen, the protagonist and narrator, chews off someone’s earlobe. Though the victim deserves it, it’s still a bit startling. Then this act sparks a desire in Ronny for raw meat. It’s enough to make the reader wonder if she’s going to turn into a vampire, a werewolf or a wendigo.

Admittedly, Ronny has good reasons to go a little crazy. Aside from being a teenage girl, it’s a difficult summer. There’s always been the stress of lack of money, but her Vietnamese immigrant parents are especially on edge as the graduation of her smart, cynical older brother approaches. Tommy is the pride of the family, and is set to attend a college that’s prestigious for their home state of Missouri. Then, tragedy tips the already bitter Ronny—and her family—off the deep end. Raw meat becomes better than a drug.

Food is the Nguyens’ love language, and a meal of pho tai, a noodle soup with raw beef, has Ronny indulging her craving, to the shock of her parents and glamorous aunt. Soon enough, she figures she might as well finish off the rest of the guy whose ear she severed. Whyever not?

Teenage girl cannibals are always in the zeitgeist, from Maren in Bones and All to Jennifer in Jennifer’s Body to Justine in Raw. It’s as if burgeoning bodies and roiling hormones need extra heaping helpings of human protein. Though some of these girls eat people just because they can, others spice up their diet with sprinklings of fury and revenge. Ronny is one of these. Her gleeful, predatory meanness is as delicious as the mi Quảng and nem chua served up by her mother. Later, learning her family history will reveal that she comes by her peculiar tastes honestly. What Hunger is a disturbing and compelling pleasure.