Hungry for the World: A Memoir [Paperback]

Kim Barnes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 2001

From the author of the critically acclaimed In the Wilderness, comes a riveting new narrative of self-discovery and personal triumph. Hungry for the World is the story of how an intelligent and passionate young woman, yearning for an understanding of the world beyond her insular family life, found her way.

On the day of her 1976 high school graduation in Lewiston, Idaho, Kim Barnes decided she could no longer abide the patriarchal domination of family and church. After a disagreement with her father–a logger and fervent adherent to the Pentecostal Christian faith–she gathered her few belongings and struck out on her own. She had no skills and no funds, but she had the courage and psychological sturdiness to make her way, and to eventually survive the influence of a man whose dominance was of a different and more menacing sort. Hungry for the World is a classic story of the search for knowledge and its consequences, both dire and beautiful.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her first book, the 1997 Pulitzer finalist In the Wilderness, which is reprised in the first 70 pages of this memoir, Barnes chronicled her idyllic childhood in Idaho's forest country and her special joy and communion with her father in tracking game. Strict adherents to a charismatic evangelical religion, her family accepted without question Barnes's father's decision, taken after locking himself in the root cellar to fast and praying for divine guidance, to leave his job as a logger and move into the mill town of Lewiston in the spring of 1970. Effectively ending Barnes's easy companionship with her father, the move marked the beginning of her adolescence and her entry into a different world, where it seemed sin was everywhere. Barnes found her parents' restrictions unjust and hypocritical, and rebelled with friends who smoked, drank and experimented with sex. When her father refused her permission to attend the senior prom, she struck out on her own with her few belongings, most notably the Winchester 30.06 gun that she treasured as a reminder of happier times with her father. Working as a bank teller, she met an intriguing older man. Although he was enigmatic and withholding, David shared her love of the outdoors and flattered her with his attention. Their story is the focus of this well-crafted memoir, as Barnes explores the complicities of an abusive relationship that eerily echoes the patriarchal domination of family and church she sought to escape. Whether she is recreating the drama of her struggles or conjuring the Idaho wilderness in lyrical passages, Barnes writes beautifully. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

This memoir, revisiting territory that Barnes already explored in In the Wilderness, focuses on her establishing her independence from her Pentecostal family. Growing up in rural Idaho, she felt bound by the dictates of her father and their religion and rebelled because she was hungry for the larger world outside those confines (hence the title). Ironically, she became involved with an older man to whom she submitted herself completely, emotionally and sexually. She explains how she eventually extricated herself, but not before telling the kind of story one would expect to read in a pulp magazine such as True Romance. The first 50-plus pages, when Barnes describes her life in the woods and before striking out on her own, are lyrical and engaging. But then she lost this reviewer. It is not clear what prompted her to readdress this period of her life in a new book, and she fails to draw deep parallels among her life choices, which makes it difficult to empathize with problems that she seems to bring on herself. Not recommended.
-Gina Kaiser, J.W. England Lib., Univ. of the Sciences in Philadelphia
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (March 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385720440
• ISBN-13: 978-0385720441
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,311,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Hungry for the World" leaves me hungry for more., April 13, 2000

By 

"nemesisnoir" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hungry for the World: A Memoir (Hardcover)

When Kim's first book "In the Wilderness" came out, I was mesmerized by the poetic language and the compelling story of her youth. "Hungry for the World" continues where Kim's first book left off, with an equal or greater power. I have a great respect for Kim, who can share the dark periods of her life with others and do so with such clairty and beauty that she can shatter that darkness with the light in her heart. I have seen Kim read in person, and her speaking voice and her voice on the page are one in the same: spellbinding and beautiful. This is a body of work that will be remembered and respected for a long, long time.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Harrowing, honest, hopeful sequel, May 10, 2000

By 

william woolum - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hungry for the World: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Kim Barnes' *Hungry for the World* is a rivetingly bare and poetic examination of how Barnes translated the patriarchal, authoritative practice of her family's (especially her father's) Pentecostal faith into a hunger for worldly experience that resulted in a troubling, dark relationship with a disturbed, disturbing, and seductive boyfriend. Barnes carefully, vividly, and intelligently chronicles this relationship, exploring how she allowed herself to become entangled in this man's destructive world. As with her first book, this memoir explores family and faith and misguided love, but never does she lay blame, never does she attack. Kim Barnes works to figure out Kim Barnes.

I love to read first person accounts of high altitude mountain climbers and in the midst of a narrative I'll think, "My goodness! How will this climber ever survive this ordeal?" But I know the writer survives because s/he wrote the account I'm reading!

I felt the same way reading this memoir. I was so engrossed in the dangerous turn Kim Barnes' life took, that I couldn't believe she would survive it -- but, I said."She has to. She wrote this book!" The memoir is harrowing. It's hopeful, too. Kim Barnes left the dark side, even if the dark side never quite left her.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hungry for More, November 30, 2000

By 

"cameoroze" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hungry for the World: A Memoir (Hardcover)

After reading Kim's first book, I'd search the biography section of my local bookstore at each visit, waiting for her next release. I am in awe of Kim's writing style, her beauty, her intelligence, her sculpting of words and memory, the gentleness with which she can now hold and stroke the most difficult and violent moments of her life.

Part of the beauty of Kim's work is the way she captures so well the landscape of north Idaho. Where handguns make no sense in the hands of teens as we listen to the news of junior and senior high school student shootings, the guns of teenage hunters are revealed to have a place in the wilds of this part of the northwest. Where rivers dammed for their energy use and the plight of the salmon make news nationwide, her writing helps readers glimpse the construction of the dams and the memories and homes that were drowned in their building. The only helpful addition to her skillfully crafted word pictures in this book would be a map of the Clearwater Valley inserted as a bookplate to help the reader have a visual sense of the geography of the area.

On a more personal level, reading Kim's book helps me to better understand this woman who was my undergraduate classmate at Lewis-Clark State College. It helps me to understand why the young woman who was equal in chronological age seemed so much more mature, more knowing, more insightful to the ways of the world in as applied to the literary classics we read and discussed together. I now have an inkling why I could not *know* Kim then, when the trials she had encountered were still so fresh. So I now marvel that her coming of age story -- part of it so horrific -- can now be shared so beautifully. The second 20+ years of her life have given her the perspective to write with kindness the story of the girl she has been, who continues to live within her side-by-side with the woman of grace she has become.

I highly recommend this book to other mature readers who have come of age through unspeakable trials. I am grateful Kim has given voice to the unspeakable.