The Hunger

Rating:
Summary: A skillful blend of the contemporary and the historical
Review: A compelling read with characters that jump off the page. This young adult novel is sophisticated enough for the adult reader, and offers insight into issues facing contemporary teens as well as adults in today's world. The characters are vivid and believable, as are the relationships between them. The facts they uncover, the secrets they reveal, and the self-discoveries they experience give them a life of their own. Obviously well-researched, this novel draws astonishing parallels between a modern-day affliction and man's historical inhumanity to man. The story centers on Paula, a teen obsessed with perfection. A straight-A student, she throws herself into a history project while trying to attain the perfect body - and becomes bulimic and anorexic in the process. As her illness progresses, she has a brush with death and comes face to face with the horrors and privation of the Armenian massacres of 1915-23. The reader is pulled into Paula's world, and along the way learns about the mechanics and treatment of anorexia and bulimia, and the warning signs. Historical facts, like the obscure but chilling 1939 Hitler quote "Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?" add depth and relevance to Paula's quest for answers as she struggles with life...and death. A must read.

Rating:
Summary: A Deft Blend of the Past and Present
Review: Anorexia and Bulimia are subjects that are all too often dealt with in a sensational manner in young adult fiction. Marsha Skrypuch, however, avoids these pitfalls in her wonderful book, "The Hunger", and has written a novel that is thought provoking but never didactic or preachy. The device she chooses to use - of linking fifteen year old Paula's struggles with food to the struggles of her ancestor in early twentieth century Armenia - works beautifully, allowing both Paula and the reader to put these struggles into a context, whilst also broadening the issues raised.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling and timely
Review: In The Hunger, Marsha Skrypuch has managed to blend the past and present in a stark and compelling comparison of two kinds of hunger. Paula is a victim of anorexia whose views are forever altered when she has a near-death experience and 'steps into' Marta's character from the past. A riveting and important work!

Rating:
Summary: How I came to write this novel.
Review: The Hunger is about an anorexic teen whose quest for perfection leads her near death. She slips back into time and steps into her Armenian great-grandmother's shoes in Turkey in 1915 -- on the eve of the mass deportation of Armenians into the desert. The historical part of The Hunger deals with the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey at the first part of the 20th century. I am not Armenian, and I had no knowledge of this genocide a decade ago when I was a freelance journalist in Brantford Ontario. At that time, I wrote monthly articles for a small historical magazine. My focus was always the immigration story of a particular family. A friend telephoned me one day, suggesting that I interview him because his father was one of the original "Georgetown boys". I told him that was wonderful, but who were the Georgetown boys? I was soon to find out that in 1923, a Canadian church society sponsored the immigration of 100 Armenian orphans between the ages of 8 and 12. These children, all boys, were orphaned as a result of the "Turkey for Turks" policy of the fledgling Young Turk government. I interviewed Carl, and found out much about his father, Kevork. However, while I found out enough to write my story, the interview left me with more questions than answers. For example, what happened to the parents of these children? And why were no female orphans brought over at this time?

Answering these questions took me on a long exploration, much of which was spent at the Multicultural Historical Archives at the University of Toronto, where I listened to the taped oral histories of the Georgetown boys, and pored over a variety of rare documents and photographs. I even discovered a tape recorded by my friend's father -- one that his own family knew nothing about. I arranged for a copy to be sent to him, who was thus able to discover much new information about his reticent father's early life.

A series of phone calls also led me to many Georgetown boys, but none who were willing to talk to me in person. There was still the fear that if they said anything, they could expect some form of reprimand. I wasn't even able to listen to all of the recorded tapes because some of the Georgetown boys had put a seal on the tapes to ensure that no one listened to them until after their death. Also, I was aware of many books that had been written on the massacres, but most were out of print, and virtually all were difficult to obtain. I requested dozens through inter-library-loan and waited patiently, hoping that something -- anything would arrive to enlighten me.

I felt like I had reached a brick wall in my research.

And then I was connected with Aram. Dorothy Manoukian, the producer of The Georgetown Boys, a CBC documentary, kindly read an early draft of my manuscript and put me in contact with Aram.

Aram was a survivor of the massacres, but not a Georgetown boy. Most importantly, he was willing to talk to me and his memories were crisp. Also, he was working on his memoirs and was in need of some help.

We agreed to meet at the Burlington Public Library, and after a 30 minute interview, Aram decided that he could trust me. He led me to his car, opened the trunk, and pulled out a huge old-fashioned suitcase stuffed full with an extraordinary collection of books. My jaw dropped. In that suitcase, he had virtually every single book that I had been trying valiantly to locate. He handed me a yellow sheet of lined paper with the titles of each book scrawled line by line.

"Sign this as proof that you borrowed them," he told me. "And I'll load this suitcase into your car."

I struggled with the suitcase myself, not wanting Aram, who was 80 if he was a day, to lift the case on his own.

Those books, plus Aram's crisp recollections, provided me with the Armenian component of The Hunger from a male point of view. Since no female survivor was willing to tell me what she had to live through, more research and much speculation helped me piece together what must have happened. After I wrote Marta's experiences, I shared them with women survivors, who simply asked me, "who told?"

Rating:
Summary: Sensitive treatment of anorexia, genocide
Review: The Hunger makes thought-provoking reading for anyone, though it is aimed at young adults. Marsha Skrypuch deals intelligently and gracefully with sensitive issues, primarily anorexia and attempted genocide, in this case the massacres of Armenians during WW1. She effectively contrasts the self-imposed hunger of anorexia and the involuntary hunger of starvation in two teenagers separated by eighty years but linked by blood, Marta in 1915-18 Armenia and Paula in 1990s Canada. Skrypuch explores both girls' desperate situations realistically and without pulling punches. This book would be an especially suitable gift for a young person struggling to overcome an eating disorder or to deal with personal or family trauma. I recommend it highly and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking novel deals with anorexia
Review: The Hunger makes thought-provoking reading for anyone, though it is aimed at young adults. Marsha Skrypuch deals intelligently and gracefully with sensitive issues, primarily anorexia and the massacres of Armenians during WW1. She effectively contrasts the self-imposed hunger of anorexia and the involuntary hunger of starvation in two teenagers separated by eighty years but linked by blood, Marta in 1915-18 Armenia and Paula in 1990s Canada. Skrypuch explores both girls' desperate situations realistically and without pulling punches. This book would be an especially suitable gift for a young person struggling to overcome an eating disorder or to deal with personal or family trauma. I recommend it highly.