• About
  • Listening
    • Baroque
    • Bluegrass and Country
    • Classical Fusion
    • Classical Period
    • Early Music
    • Film soundtracks
    • Folk Music
    • Jazz
    • Modern Classical
    • Modern Pop Fusion
    • Musicals
    • Romantic Classical
    • Spoken word
    • World Music
  • Reading
    • Fiction
      • Children’s and Young Adult Fiction
      • Classic writers and their works
      • Contemporary Fiction
      • Crime and Detective Fiction
      • Fictionalised Biography
      • Historical Fiction
      • Horror
      • Lighter-hearted reads
      • Literary Fiction
      • Plays and Poetry
      • Romance
      • SF
      • Short stories
      • Western
      • Whimsy and Fantastical
    • Non-Fiction
      • Arts
      • Biography and Autobiography
      • Ethics, reflection, a meditative space
      • Food and Drink
      • Geography and Travel
      • Health and wellbeing
      • History and Social History
      • Philosophy of Mind
      • Science and nature
      • Society; Politics; Economics
  • Reading the 20th Century
  • Watching
    • Documentary
    • Film
    • Staged Production
    • TV
  • Shouting From The Soapbox
    • Arts Soapbox
    • Chitchat
    • Philosophical Soapbox
    • Science and Health Soapbox
  • Interviews / Q + A
  • Indexes
    • Index of Bookieness – Fiction
    • Index of Bookieness – Non-Fiction
    • Index of authors
    • Index of titles
    • 20th Century Index
    • Sound Index
      • Composers Index
      • Performers Index
    • Filmed Index

Lady Fancifull

~ adventures in a mainly literary obsession

Lady Fancifull

Tag Archives: The Hunger

Alma Katsu – The Hunger

05 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Fiction, Historical Fiction, Horror, Literary Fiction, Reading, Western

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Alma Katsu, Book Review, The Donner Party, The Hunger

Literary Western-Horror splice

There is historical background to Alma Katsu’s novel, The Hunger, which is based on ‘The Donner Party’ – or, more properly, ‘The Donner-Reed Party’,  a large group of pioneers, led by, at different times George Donner and James F. Reed, who set out, in May 1846, from Springfield Illinois, to travel to California. Initially there were 500 wagons, many families taking several wagons, filled with household possessions as well as supplies and cattle for food,  as they were effectively moving home to a new State. The pioneers were mostly families, but with some single men, and most of the pioneers had a range of reasons for making this challenging journey. Some, inevitably were escaping past mistakes, crimes and misdemeanours, some looking for the prospect of creating a better life for their young families.

The journey was one which had been successfully done before, by others, and initially the Donner Party were doing fine.. A fatal mistake was made, however, to pursue a shortcut, the Hastings Cutoff, from Fort Bridger, Wyoming. Unfortunately Lansford Hastings, the promoter of this supposed short cut, had been – economical – with its suitability.

Great Salt Lake Desert Crossing

The party encountered severe problems with weather and terrain, firstly when the Hastings Cutoff proved not to be a short cut, landing the group in a parching desert crossing of the Great Salt Lake Desert, meaning that they joined the Oregon trail, making a push over the Sierra Nevada mountains, late in the season at the end of October, becoming trapped by heavy snowfall blocking the pass. Stuck  in the high mountains, by the time rescue came less than half of the group of just under 90 who had set out on that final push were still alive. Others had not chosen to follow the route, or had left the wagon train earlier, There were also several rescue attempts which had resulted in some of the rescuers perishing. Food supplies ran out, and the survivors, or some of them, had resorted to cannibalism, eating the bodies of their dead companions

Sierra Nevada Mountains

Katsu, who writes well, really well, has taken the names of the real pioneers, but has created her own story around this, with an imaginative, horror explanation of what happened. Although for me the horror aspects are the least interesting parts of the book, having recently read Algernon Blackwood’s truly chilling short story The Wendigo, based on the beliefs of certain Native American tribes, I was more willing to be rattled by the fears of ‘this is a bad place’ energy being expressed by some in Katsu’s story who are sensitive to the energy of place.

Stumps of trees cut at the Alder Creek site by members of the Donner Party, photograph taken in 1866. The height of the stumps indicates the depth of snow. Wiki Commons

I always have certain problems with inventing stories (particularly bad ones) for real characters who once lived, and must confess to a certain unease here too, particularly when dodgy pasts and shady motivations and characterisations of one kind or another, are assigned to real people, though it certainly seems that some of those who are most harshly dealt with in her book were, indeed, those with stains laid against them by survivors

Reading the long Wiki entry, and a couple of other sources, on what is a gripping tale, with well drawn characters – particularly some of the women, really given flesh, integrity and stories – she has researched well, and the imaginative twist she inserts is one which even could have a scientific basis, given knowledge of Kuru and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathy diseases, associated not just with cannibalism, but where one species eats another which is not its ‘normal’ diet – BSE, Creutzfeld Jacob, etc a better known example of this.

I recommend this strongly. It is a very well told, well paced tale, with strong characterisation, moving and horrific. Just don’t read it (or part of it) late at night or close to meal times.

I received this  as a review copy via  Amazon Vine UK

The Hunger Amazon UK
The Hunger Amazon USA

Advertisement

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Pocket
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Page Indexes

  • About
    • Index of Bookieness – Fiction
    • Index of Bookieness – Non-Fiction
    • Index of authors
    • Index of titles
    • 20th Century Index
  • Sound Index
    • Composers Index
    • Performers Index
  • Filmed Index

Genres

Archives

January 2023
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Mar    

Posts Getting Perused

  • William Butler Yeats - Vacillation
    William Butler Yeats - Vacillation
  • Mick Herron - Dead Lions
    Mick Herron - Dead Lions
  • David Bez - Salad Love
    David Bez - Salad Love
  • Mick Herron - Real Tigers
    Mick Herron - Real Tigers
  • Ossian Ward - Ways Of Looking (How to Experience Contemporary Art)
    Ossian Ward - Ways Of Looking (How to Experience Contemporary Art)
  • Arthur Schnitzler - La Ronde
    Arthur Schnitzler - La Ronde
  • Ghazal - As Night Falls On The Silk Road
    Ghazal - As Night Falls On The Silk Road
  • Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
    Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Recent Posts

  • Bart Van Es – The Cut Out Girl
  • Joan Baez – Vol 1
  • J.S.Bach – Goldberg Variations – Zhu Xiao-Mei
  • Zhu Xiao-Mei – The Secret Piano
  • Jane Harper – The Lost Man

NetGalley Badges

Fancifull Stats

  • 162,831 hits
Follow Lady Fancifull on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Follow on Bloglovin

Tags

1930s setting Adult Faerie Tale Andrew Greig Arvo Pärt Autobiography baroque Beryl Bainbridge Biography Biography as Fiction Bits and Bobs Bits and Pieces Book Review Books about Books Cats Children's Book Review Classical music Classical music review Classic Crime Fiction Colm Toibin Cookery Book Crime Fiction David Mitchell Dystopia Espionage Ethics Fantasy Fiction Feminism Film review First World War Folk Music Food Industry France Gay and Lesbian Literature Ghost story Golden-Age Crime Fiction Graham Greene Health and wellbeing Historical Fiction History Humour Humour and Wit Ireland Irish writer Irvin D. Yalom Janice Galloway Japan Literary Fiction Literary pastiche Lynn Shepherd Marcus Sedgwick Meditation Mick Herron Minimalism Music review Myths and Legends Neil Gaiman Ngaio Marsh Novels about America Other Stuff Patrick Flanery Patrick Hamilton Perfumery Philip Glass Philosophy Police Procedural Post-Apocalypse Psychiatry Psychological Thriller Psychology Psychotherapy Publication Day Reading Rebecca Mascull Reflection Robert Harris Rose Tremain Russian Revolution sacred music Sadie Jones Sci-Fi Science and nature Scottish writer Second World War SF Shakespeare Short stories Simon Mawer Soapbox Spy thriller Susan Hill Tana French The Cold War The Natural World TV Drama Victorian set fiction Whimsy and Fantasy Fiction William Boyd World music review Writing Young Adult Fiction

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Lady Fancifull
    • Join 771 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Lady Fancifull
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.

    %d bloggers like this: