The Hunger

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Beginning June 24 of one year and concluding July 10 of the next, The
Hunger is a powerful story of a 15-year-old girl’s self-destructive
response to her negative body image. Using dated “chapters,”
Skrypuch first establishes Paula Romaniuk’s increasing dissatisfaction
with her growing, awkward body (which seemingly begins harmlessly with
exercise and dieting and escalates into bulimia and anorexia) before
sending the Brantford, Ontario, teenager on a life-threatening journey.

Well researched, the book does not soft-pedal Paula’s illness, and
numerous scenes (including one involving Paula’s gorging on food
before purging) graphically illustrates the “ugliness” of
bulimia/anorexia. Skrypuch’s adding Paula’s weight to the dated
entries allows readers to monitor Paula’s declining poundage until her
December 24 heart attack.

While “dead,” Paula, through an out-of-body experience, becomes
Marta, a 13-year-old orphaned Armenian girl living in 1915, a period
during which the Turks were slaughtering the Armenians. Consuming a
third of The Hunger’s length, this section follows Marta’s struggles
to avoid dying of hunger or being killed, and it concludes with
Marta’s reaching safety. At that point Paula regains consciousness.
Paula’s memories of Marta’s hunger cause her to take beginning steps
to overcome her bulimia and anorexia. Skrypuch, however, avoids an easy
“happy-ever-after-ending” by leaving Paula still in treatment.

The Armenian genocide section is rooted in one of Paula’s school
assignments, which had led to Paula’s investigating her
grandmother’s past. While events in this segment are gripping and
terrifying in their horror, it is too short for readers to make the same
character connection with Marta that they had established with Paula.
Nonetheless, The Hunger is a fine read. Highly recommended.