Review: Hunger

Title: Hunger
Author: Jackie Morse Kessler
Publisher: Graphia
Pages: 174
Series: Horsemen of the Apocalypse #1
Rating: 3/5
From the back cover:
"Thou art the Black Rider. Go thee out unto the world."


Lisabeth Lewis has a black steed, a set of scales, and a new job: she's been appointed Famine. How will an anorexic seventeen-year-old girl from the suburbs fare as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Traveling the world on her steed gives Lisa freedom from her troubles at home -- her constant battle with hunger and the struggle to hide it from the people who care about her. But being Famine forces her to go places where hunger is a painful part of everyday life and to face the horrifying effects of her awesome new power. Can Lisa find a way to harness that power -- and the courage to fight her own inner demons?

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This review is a hard one for me to write. I had a lot of problems with this book, but at the same time I thought it had a really interesting premise and I loved Jackie Morse Kessler's writing style. The idea behind the story is simple enough: Lisa is anorexic, depressed, and one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Three pills into her suicide attempt, Death shows up at her front door and hands her the role of Famine. Lisa doesn't know how to handle the new job, especially not with all the pressure from her family and her boyfriend and her ex-best friend, but maybe, just maybe, it will teach her some important lessons.

My main objection to Hunger was at the very beginning. When Death shows up to hand her the Scales that are the symbol of the office of Famine, Lisa is three pills into a suicide attempt. He says a couple of weird sentences, hands her some scales, and leaves. Lisa decides that she is hallucinating (and fat), but says "At least I'm not depressed anymore." Not right-this-second suicidal I can understand. To be so torn up as to be in the middle of a suicide attempt and then decide after a brief interruption that she's not at all depressed anymore? It didn't seem realistic. At all.

My other problem was the characterization of Lisa and her friends. All we really know about Lisa is that she's anorexic. Everything we see about her character is directly related to anorexia. We don't know who she is as a person, we know who she is as an anorexic girl. By the end, we do see a few of her character traits, but it's still mostly about her anorexia. Tammy is just the bulimic friend. I'm still not quite sure how I feel about the way that subject was handled, but all we know about Tammy is that she's bulimic. The relationships with James and Suzanne are more interesting, but we don't know really anything about them, either.

That aside, I loved Jackie Morse Kessler's writing style, and the concept was really cool. Death was my favorite character by far, and it was interesting to see the way Lisa's role as Famine affected her personal life and vice versa. Despite my initial problems with the characters, I did enjoy the book and will most likely read the second one when it comes out. Hunger is not a book that I'm going to press into someone's hands and say "Read this!" but I do think it makes a good read.

Links:

Jackie Morse Kessler's website

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P.S. On a completely unrelated note, I'd like to take a moment today to wish my (not-so-)little brother a very happy birthday today!