Monday, August 5, 2013

Review: Sacred Hunger

There are so many wonderful books that I have yet to read and Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger is now off that list, and off the list of truly wonderful books I almost missed. Thanks to my book group I've been immersed in the power and tension of Sacred Hunger for several days.
This is not easy book to read, several times I wanted to close my eyes, not see, as it were, the cruelty and arrogance of men, the taken for granted-ness by those in the past who colonised the land and lives of others.  
So this is a book that, almost, one needs to read; but it carries its lessons lightly and is carefully planned to gather in from its disparate parts and characters the whole story.  Unsworth is a master narrator, guiding the reader through the personal journeys of the characters, and over the landscapes travelled, both physical and emotional.
It would have been good to have had a cast list as a reminder about who was who in the ships crew ... but that aside this is a great book: well written, deeply authentic with the rare ability to provoke a range of emotions in the reader.
Really looking forward to chatting about this with my book group; its a long read and the subject may deter some so interesting in the first place to find out which of us got to the last page.

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