A spare and haunting story of love, memory, and appetite from one of modern Europe s darkest times.
Traveling to the world s remote places, a d... read full description
reviews
Dec 17, 2009
Gwen
rated it: 
For all of Blackwell's descriptions of rare fronds and botanical advances, I'm glad to say Hunger is every bit as organic as it ought to be. (I hesitate to call it a novella -- though it racks in at 129 pages of prose, the text is large and the margins are wide.) The reader is privy to snatches of place and time via the wide ruminations of an aging, unnamed botanist who survived the blockade of Leningrad. There isn't much time for character development (but rather character devolution) during
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Jan 25, 2009
Bonnie Jeanne
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This book is not about hunger, unless the hunger you think of is the hunger of a soul for forgiveness. Indeed, there is a great deal about food hunger in this book as it takes place during the "hunger winter" in 1941 in Leningrad. If I ever learned of this event in Russian history, it faded from memory. I can't imagine what the suffering was like. [return][return]There is one line I have copied to my reading pillow (a small pyramid shaped pillow made of plain muslin that I write quotes
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Feb 02, 2011
Glenn
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I was lucky to find this in a bookshop in a Canadian airport - you would never see a book like this in an American airport. The capsule description on Amazon is fairly accurate if you de-emphasize the romantic affairs. This is a quick read - around 170 pages - and a very interesting piece of historical fiction. It focuses on a small group of botanists during the siege of Leningrad. We learn about the hunger of the starving populace and the hunger of these people for love, hope and meaning. The c
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Jan 09, 2011
Daisy
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The only reason it took me longer than an hour or so to read short novel is that I had to stop so often to copy its affecting and beautiful sentences into my notebook. I wrote nine different quotes down. I'm kind of speechless. This was amazing.
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Sep 09, 2010
Ricardo
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“Aqueles que se afogam nunca mudam os factos, mas aqueles que sobrevivem ao mar nos pulmões devem enviar as suas histórias em palavras, palavras como pequenos barcos de casco furado, através da distância, do frio, e das correntes de água.”
Sobrevivente do cerco alemão a Leninegrado durante a Segunda Guerra, atrocidade que veio a ceifar mais de um milhão de vidas, um botânico cuja identidade não é revelada recorda a agonia vivida nesse período. Tal como a sua mulher, trabalhou no Instituto d More...
Sobrevivente do cerco alemão a Leninegrado durante a Segunda Guerra, atrocidade que veio a ceifar mais de um milhão de vidas, um botânico cuja identidade não é revelada recorda a agonia vivida nesse período. Tal como a sua mulher, trabalhou no Instituto d More...
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Sep 27, 2007
such a lovely retrospective narrator. oh, god, the ending---I read it once, then read it out loud, amazed such restraint could evoke such powerful emotion. wonderfully moving.
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Feb 10, 2012
Sweetp-1
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This is a short novella, a one-sitting read. The prose is delicious, like poetry in places, in the form of short vignettes. It's very sparse and pared down and bleak which is fitting for the subject matter (the siege of Leningrad during WWII). The story unfolds slowly, alternating between heart breaking and stomach griping glimpses of what the siege was like, with richer and decadent descriptions of the narrator's sexual conquests, his relationship with his wife and his international travels as
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Mar 29, 2011
Maren
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Elise Blackwell offers a fictional account of the scientists who saved seeds, grains, and potatoes at the Vavilov Institute while they were starving during the Siege of Leningrad. It is a trim little book of short, evocative passages as the unnamed and morally questionable scientist narrator veers between the slow starvation of the siege to his various appetites, as he remembers both meals and women from his past. It was well-worth reading and will likely spur readers to find out more about the
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Aug 26, 2011
Célia
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Em Nova Iorque, um homem idoso recorda os tempos que passou na Rússia durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, durante o cerco a Leninegrado. Nunca lhe sabemos o nome, apenas que fazia parte de um grupo de cientistas de um laboratório de genética que, enquanto a fome na cidade continuava a aumentar, tinha como missão proteger as sementes, várias delas raras, mesmo que para isso tivessem de sacrificar a sua vida.
Este relato na primeira pessoa fez-me lembrar um conjunto de peças de um puzzle More...
Este relato na primeira pessoa fez-me lembrar um conjunto de peças de um puzzle More...
Dec 15, 2011
Cat
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A gorgeous, spare, lyrical, and heart-breaking book. The story of scientists defending a seed bank during the Siege of Leningrad and one in their number who can't bear the noble sacrifices the time seems to be calling for. Blackwell imagines starvation with such intensity and meditates on appetite both philosophically and sensorially. A profound reflection on civilizations at war, the ethics of renunciation and survival, and the interpersonal deceptions that shape an individual life. Blackwell's
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Jul 07, 2009
Allison
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I have a weakness for small, beautiful, matte-paper hardback books. While I'm reading them I can't stop smoothing my fingers over the cover paper. Sometimes my husband asks if the book and I would like to be alone.
The prose is spare and somehow cold in this book. Reading it feels somehow akin to walking through the frigid, snow-dusted squares of a Russian city. It makes you feel cold and sad and hungry.
The unnamed narrator is a scientist who collects plants and seeds to be stored saf More...
The prose is spare and somehow cold in this book. Reading it feels somehow akin to walking through the frigid, snow-dusted squares of a Russian city. It makes you feel cold and sad and hungry.
The unnamed narrator is a scientist who collects plants and seeds to be stored saf More...
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Feb 12, 2008
Nancy
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It's not until you finish this story and think about it for a while that it hits you what it was all really about. When a novel can do that, then it's a good one -- and this novel will probably have me thinking for a while.
The story is told from the perspective of an elderly man, looking out his window in an apartment in New York. The man, whose name I don't believe was ever mentioned, is reliving a horrible time in history: the siege of Leningrad (the modern city of St. Petersburg) More...
The story is told from the perspective of an elderly man, looking out his window in an apartment in New York. The man, whose name I don't believe was ever mentioned, is reliving a horrible time in history: the siege of Leningrad (the modern city of St. Petersburg) More...
May 17, 2009
Sarah
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I am glad I read The Eighth Day of the Week by Marek Hlasko before reading Hunger by Elise Blackwell because it put me in the right frame of mind. Both are very intimate first hand accounts of the effects of the Second World War. Blackwell's novel covers the siege of Leningrad (September 1941 through January 1944) and focuses on the botanists at the Vavilov Institute who protected their collection of seeds despite the starvation faced by the city.
Hunger like The Eighth Day of the Wee More...
Hunger like The Eighth Day of the Wee More...
Oct 11, 2009
Annie
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I love Elise Blackwell's sparse, poetic prose. This slim novel (really, it's more of a novella) stays with you for a long time because the characters are so finely drawn and she has distilled so much of the life and times of Russia during WWII into this story. But even beyond the time and place of the story, it's a chronicle of humans and their appetites not only for food but for emotion.
Dec 18, 2011
Rachel
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Great general concept, and a fascinating topic, but it didn't hit the spot for me. I've heard much praise for the 'spare' and 'lyrical' writing in this, and its true there were some lovely passages, but the overall narrative danced around the incidents it was trying to invoke. Sort of like paddling atop a beautiful ocean, rather than immersing yourself in it.
May 14, 2009
Blake
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It's been awhile since I've read a book where an author used so much research so well, and without calling attention to it, without overburdening me with factual information.
I'd heard stories in school about the harshness of life in WWII, Communist Russia, but this book makes it so vivid.
Nov 04, 2009
John
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Elegant, spare, lucid prose ... Blackwell unfolds the drama with quiet precision, and engulfs the reader with gripping illuminations.
Nov 24, 2009
Louvaine
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Interesting, off-beat story of an agriculturist trying to survive on the grain he's to protect during the Stalingrad blockade.
Feb 22, 2009
Peter
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A truly inspired story told in a magnificient fashion. A parable for our age.
Aug 22, 2011
Deanie
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I picked up this novel because I was interested in the Vavilov Institute during the Siege of Leningrad. And that is definitely what this novel is about--a rather unique and particular moment plucked from history. The descriptions of nature and food in this short novel (almost a novella) are detailed and lovely. The love story and underlying drama with the war fold well into the historical details that Blackwell researched. It will definitely make you rethink how you view food.
Dec 16, 2009
Becca
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Set in Leningrad during the German seige, as citizens starve and thousands die - the narrator, who worked collecting and protecting seeds from around the world, drifts between recounting the seige's day to day and the time before the war. The book is full of bodies and fruit, and is a short, spare read. I wasn't emotionally moved the way the book wanted me to be, I think, but I was still engrossed, and its a vivid picture of this time and place about which I knew nothing.
May 23, 2010
Dannie
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Despite the low rating I actually recommend reading this book. It kind of flipflops everywhere and I'm not to impressed with the main character, but it the whole thing is thought provoking. I think the writer was going for shock value, however I'm reading another book that would send most people paying their respects to the porcelain god.
Dec 17, 2009
erin
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this books asks, how do you protect hundreds of seed and plant specimens during an antigenetics campaign in russia? what happens when you're holed up with these seeds and you start to get real hungry? very vivid yet very sad in its depiction of human will.
Oct 18, 2009
This is the first novel I've read that celebrates epicurean indulgences and romance without losing sight of deprivation and mortality in Stalin era Russia. What a combo.
Oct 29, 2008
T
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J.M. Coetzee thinks this book is meritorious and who am I to argue? This novella is small and perfect. I bought multiple copies to thrust at friends!
Sep 10, 2008
Karen
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Lush, lovely writing. A very important book about the human spirit in a time of crisis. Highly recommended.
Sep 06, 2008
Mindy
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From this book, I learned I am quite daft about history, Russia and reading comprehension.
