Jackie Morse Kessler's YA debut Hunger is the story of an anorexic girl tapped as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse--Famine, specifically. It features Kurt Cobain as Death, magical vomiting, and it is exactly as insane as it sounds.

It's also a pretty damned good read.

And gross. I have to warn you that Hunger is not for any reader with a weak stomach. Kessler vividly and graphically describes vomiting (of both the literal and magical sorts) and a bout of constipation (which is not magical at all). And the descriptions of food at the beginning of the novel straddle the border between food porn and just plain disgusting--and often cross it.

All this is appropriate, of course, and also kind of the point--Kessler's illustrating to us, though in a way that's mildly stomach churning, exactly how severely ana wrecks your life.

Hunger is the story of Lisabeth Lewis, a teenage girl who has a crisis of confidence after she nabs her first boyfriend. We're introduced to her amidst an attempted drug overdose following a lovers' quarrel. Three Lexapros down, Death comes calling, announcing to Lisa that, as Famine, she's got some work to do. But Lisa resists the call to adventure, and we're instead plunged back into her stifling suburban life, one where one best friend hates her while the other enables her, one where her mother is absent and her father only pleasantly clueless--one where a "Thin voice" intrudes on every aspect of her waking life, helpfully telling her how many calories are in each dish and how many hours she need bike to burn them off.

It's sometimes uncomfortable to be in Lisa's head--it's a suffocating, oppressive place. Kessler does a good job of accurately rendering the horror, discomfort, and stringent control of disordered eating. Lisa herself is believable, if sometimes unlikable, thanks to her eating disorder, and the supporting cast of characters in her real life is likewise very real.

The paranormal aspects are described a bit more hazily. Don't get me wrong; I loved Lisa's interactions with Midnight, her immortal steed, and Death himself. But Pestilence and War were little more than caricatures, and I never quite understood how Lisa's powers worked. And the entire supernatural storyline is resolved entirely too quickly and neatly. Despite the fact that Lisa learns that she can solve world hunger, we're given a simple, rosy, and utterly unsupernatural ending--one that would be more apropos for an 80s problem novel than a modern paranormal one.

Still, Kessler gives us an innovative premise that's well-executed, and at times even artful. Her prose is flawless and sometimes pretty (and sometimes, again, really appropriately gross). This is certainly a worthwhile read for fans of paranormal YA and is a solid start to a new series.


Disclosure: I received a review copy of this volume through netgalley.com.