![]() ![]() Unfortunately, when I actually read the novel, what I found was a unfocused, mundane, performatively progressive (but not actually progressive), non-horrific, sensationalizing novel. ![]() In short, the pioneers hungered for land, but the land turned that hunger into a real, tangible, horrifying weapon that almost completely destroyed them. Since I was also reading this as a potential case study for my PhD thesis about contemporary Euro-American depictions of Indigenous ghosts, I was also hoping that there would be some moments in the novel that used the story of the Donner Party as an allegory for the destruction that colonisers wrought upon Indigenous people, but with the horror mirrored back on the colonisers. What I hoped to get from this novel was a slow build of horror, much like what happened with the real Donner Party who seemed to run into misfortune after misfortune on the latter half of the trail. It certainly didn’t hurt that the promotional blurb on the front cover is from Stephen King, who states that the novel is, “Deeply, deeply disturbing.” As a historical fiction horror novel for young adults, The Hunger by Alma Katsu ticked almost all of my favourite boxes on a surface level. The concept of a horror story centered around the Donner Party is an incredibly good one, I think, and I have always been interested in the real Donner Party and have watched several documentaries, listened to podcasts, and read a book about their journey. I had some pretty high hopes for this novel. ![]() Content warnings: racism, colonisation, rape, incest, homophobia ![]()
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