Hunger: A Novel [Hardcover]

Elise Blackwell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2003

When German troops surround Leningrad and cut off food supplies in the fall of 1941, no one imagines that the siege will last 900 long days and take hundreds of thousands of lives. As the first 'hunger winter' sets in, the city's residents strip the bark off trees, boil and eat moss-covered stones, and trade priceless antiques for half a loaf of bread-and sex for a chunk of sugar. But the scientists at the Institute of Plant Industry pledge to protect their collection of rare seeds, painstakingly gathered from all over the world, no matter the human cost. One scientist describes how his small group of colleagues, including his quietly determined wife, Alena, splinters between those who would preserve their principles at the price of starvation, and others who turn to deception-and more sinister measures-to survive. His memories of the years before the war, when he traveled throughout the world and tasted the sensual pleasures of life's lush richness, offset his heartbreaking account of the most wrenching decisions a human being can make.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An elderly Russian emigrr 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. Plotwise, there are some intriguing twists and turns as the war progresses, but the climax is rather tepid, with Blackwell underplaying her narrator's unusual and immoral survival tactics as food becomes increasingly scarce. Still, this is a well-crafted novel that works largely because of its small, evocative moments.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

An unnamed scientist, now safely ensconced in New York City, looks back at the "hunger winter" as German troops surrounded Leningrad in the fall of 1941. In a voice made weary by having seen the worst side of human nature, he describes the 900-day siege that left the city without food and its inhabitants desperate. His own colleagues, all of whom work for an institute that collects rare seeds, split into two groups: those who preserve their principles (including his quiet but steely wife, Alena) and those who use any means available to survive. When the institute's director is incarcerated for political crimes, Alena signs a petition in his defense while her husband begins to pilfer seeds from the collection to assuage his hunger. A man of large appetites, he also comforts himself by recalling his extensive travels before the war, the many exotic foods he sampled, and his numerous infidelities, all the while comparing his wife's brave idealism with his own sneaky pragmatism. Blackwell's debut is a lyrical, haunting story about the cost of survival. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown; 1st edition (May 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316738956
• ISBN-13: 978-0316738958
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,349,952 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Elise Blackwell is the author of three critically hailed novels: Hunger, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, and Grub. Her books have been chosen for numerous "best of the year" lists, including the Los Angeles Times, Sydney Morning Herald, and Kirkus. Her short stories and cultural criticism have appeared in Witness, Topic, Seed, Global City Review, Quick Fiction, and elsewhere. Her fourth novel, An Unfinished Score, will be published by Unbridled Books in spring 2010. For more information about Elise and her books, please visit her website: http://eliseblackwell.com/

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars HUMANITY LAID BARE, April 2, 2004

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hunger: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is such a small book to contain so very much. Elise Blackwell has created something very special indeed with this, her first novel. With eloquence and empathy, she transports the reader back in time to Leningrad in 1941 - the German army approaches, and the people in the city prepare for the attack, but it comes in a form they do not expect. The Germans simply cut the city off from the outside world, and sit and wait for the inhabitants to starve to death.

Blackwell's narrator is an elderly Russian botanist living in America, looking back at his time in the blockaded city, remembering his wife and coworkers - remembering the choices that he and the others made in order to survive. Before and during the war, he traveled the world with his colleagues, collecting specimens of plants and seeds from every continent in order to study them and find ways to better feed people in need. The institute where he works - like every facet of Russian society at the time - is caught up in the political upheaval of a country being painfully reborn. The director of the institute, once widely revered and respected both as a scientist and a human being, falls out of favor with the authorities and is sentenced to die. Those who are left behind must choose to bend and survive or resist and perish - professionally, physically or both. Once the German blockade of the city begins, however, they realize that there are far more pressing choices to make. Do they open the storehouses of the institute and distribute the grain samples to the people, or do they preserve them in the name of science, for future generations? The scientists at the institute agree to preserve the samples, to starve before they touch them - but it's a difficult promise to keep.

All around them in Leningrad, people from all walks of life are facing similar decisions. As the blockade drags on - and it lasted for 900 days - desperation becomes more and more intense. Horses disappear - then family pets, even rats are killed for their meat. People begin to strip the bark from the trees to eat - lichen-covered stones are boiled for soup. Food becomes the currency of the city - and people are willing to do all sorts of things to obtain it.

More than simply a picture of a horrible time, when so many people died and suffered, Elise Blackwell's novel is an incredibly moving portrait of humanity itself, a picture of what it truly means to be human and to be forced to make unthinkable decisions based on the need to survive. The thoughts and memories of the narrator - and the words and actions of those around him - paint moving images in delicate but sure strokes. An incredible amount of not only research, but sheer thought and contemplation went into the conception and creation of this book. It would be a stunning accomplishment by a seasoned writer - as a debut, it shimmers. This is a writer of great talent, soul and promise.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Original and Oddly Fascinating Read, May 10, 2003

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hunger: A Novel (Hardcover)

"It is not so uncommon for those near the end of their lives to run their mind's hand over the contours of those lives."

HUNGER, Elise Blackwell's first novel, begins with this sentence, elegant in its simple statement. And from there an anonymous scientist, the narrator, endeavors on his personal recollection of one of the most horrific periods in history.

The narrator lived through the "hunger winter" that began in 1941 in Leningrad. For 900 days, he witnessed the city fall around him and the deaths of the city folk at the hands of Nazis. Following a lifetime of exotic travel that took him to Mexico, Afghanistan and other welcoming places in search of rare seed and plant specimens, he now finds himself trapped with his colleagues protecting the botanical institute they've worked so hard to build. A pact is made --- the scientists will not eat their collections, no matter how desperate for food they may become; they will preserve their store for future generations, even if they perish in their attempts. Only our narrator cannot truly accept this agreement. Directed by his appetites, he watches his colleagues barter their bodies and their few material possessions for scraps, for tree bark to make soup, for a single potato. Ultimately they die, as he indulges in the institute's seed supply behind their frail backs.

Among his colleagues is Alena, his wife, a woman of great principle. He also watches her dwindle away to nothing, while he feeds his appetite. He tries to rationalize his secret meals by saying he must do anything to survive at any cost. But his explanations are selfish; he is an indulgent man whose every choice in life has been dictated by his wants, his desires. In recounting his memories we learn that he collected women the way he collected seeds --- for their variety, their beauty, even their danger --- and with little regard for his wife, whom he says he adores. He claims that with each affair, with each poor decision, regret was always instant, but his regret is less for the guilt of what he did and more for having "awakened the horrible hunger" again.

A brief book, Blackwell's writing is economical, replicating the very deprivation her book depicts. Her prose is spare, short passages and short memories. But to not remember might render the power to finally do the narrator in: "I told myself that pain was the price of life; its absence was the step into death."

In the end the narrator, like his long lost colleagues, saves seeds too. In a jar he has "reproduced each mouthful of food I stole during the winter of hunger ... I wonder if such a meager portion could have kept my Alena alive." Does he regret his choice, or hers?

The shelves are full of excellent books, fiction and non-fiction, about the travesties of World War II and the Holocaust. While the setting of HUNGER is unique, it is an all-too-recognizably-human story about the choice between one's own life and what one might leave for the next generation (in this case, the institute's collections). A true humanitarian would put the good of others before the good of the self --- but not Blackwell's narrator. He lacks redeeming qualities, and it is that lack that makes his personal story such an original and oddly fascinating read.

--- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Less is more, May 22, 2003

By 

Paul Campos - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hunger: A Novel (Hardcover)

A book about people in extreme situations is always in danger of descending into melodrama or outright sensationalism. Elise Blackwell avoids this danger by employing two strategies: A prose style that avoids the merely decorative adjective, and a protagonist who is too true to be good.

"Hunger" reminds us that much of what we think of as humanity simply disappears when people are starving (as most people have for at least part of their lives throughout much of history). Yet it also reminds us that humanity is often at its most heroic when heroism consists of something as simple as behaving decently in the midst of barbarism.

Reading this book brought to mind something that Bertrand Russell said about how the 20th century destroyed the comfortable optimism of 19th century thinkers that history was essentially the march of progress: "Our age calls for greater energy of belief than was needed in the 18th and 19th centuries. Imagine Goethe, Shelley and H.G. Wells confined for years in Buchenwald; how would they emerge? Obviously not as they went in . . . Most philosophers have more breath of outlook when adequately nourished than when driven mad by hunger, and it is by no means a general rule that intense suffering makes men wise."

Blackwell's novel is short, because it's the right length for what she was aiming to accomplish. She succeeds in making a protagonist who is in many ways utterly unsympathetic someone we can understand as an example of what happens to a talented and admirable person who is placed in situations that tempt him beyond the limits of his virtue.

It is worth considering in just what ways this same thing is happening to oneself.