When all of the other tributes are dead, the rule change is abruptly revoked. With neither willing to kill the other, Katniss comes up with a solution: a double suicide by eating poisonous berries. This forces the authorities to concede that they have both won the Games, just in time to save their lives. During and after the Games, Katniss's genuine feelings for Peeta grow, and she struggles to reconcile them with the fact that their relationship developed under duress. It is not a memoir that asks for our pity, or tries to manipulate the reader, it is simply a woman's truth. Gay's self-awareness is painful to read as she talks about experiences in narrow seating on airlines, in movie theatres or restaurants, or at events. The assumptions people make about her; the "concerns" for her health; the ultimate belief that as a woman, a fat woman, she just takes up too much space.

With that in mind, reading this was not easy. It was sometimes so brutal that I had to set it down, and yet it was so engrossing that I still managed to read it in just over 24 hours. Multiple times, these parts made me feel that all of the things I've learnt and still learning in medical school are trash. And I am telling you, that's awful to feel that way because of a book. Combines meticulous historical research and a keen understanding of human nature with a monstrous original metaphor to reimagine the ill-fated Donner-Reed party as a haunted endeavor, doomed from its first mile.” — SalonKatsu shows an acute understanding of human nature.…[She] is at her best when she forces her readers to stare at the almost unimaginable meeting of ordinary people and extraordinary desperation, using her sharp, haunting language.” — USA Today

J.C. Maçek III of PopMatters stated, "While the film saga does capture the action of The Hunger Games, the novels are most assuredly the heart of the story. They are nothing less than 'The Writer’s Cut' of the films themselves." [36] In his review Mike Ruiz argues that The Hunger Games film does not have the first-person narrative that is in the original novel. As a result, Ruiz contends the novel is better than the film. [37] The book was also illuminating in its exploration of culture's cruelty, prejudice, and rhetoric about weight. Eye opening.So when she is left changing the incontinence pads, it is for a man who has hardly earned her generosity. But does “earning” have anything to do with it? Perhaps the economies of care and sacrifice do not behave like that. Anita moves between frustration, compassion, fraught exhaustion and a love that “punches blindly” – because, yes, they have loved each other, this husband and wife. Raisin honours the ‘ordinary’ stories he tells – these are complicated lives, not amenable to summings up I hate myself. Or society tells me I am supposed to hate myself, so I guess this, at least, is something I am doing right. I found her description of getting a tattoo fascinating. And she shed some new light on the subject of bulimia. Her descriptions of her humiliations were the most vivid and well-described. When she got into general non-fiction rhetoric, my interest waned. I wanted everything to be first person. Even though Gay spends a lot of time probing the psychological barriers that have contributed to her weight gain, this book isn’t about “making excuses.” When she was 12, Gay was gang-raped by a group of boys and she didn’t tell anyone about it...for 30 years. She didn’t know how to ask for the help she needed, so she just kept it all in. The self-blame, the depression, the bullying and slut-shaming she received. The next year, she left home for boarding school and she discovered comfort in the form of food. Without any adults really keeping an eye on her, she began to gain weight. Her feelings of trauma and her need for comfort were so intense that her weight gain was rather dramatic. Her family was startled by the change, but didn’t know the psychological roots and so their response really just made her feel worse. She began to conflate her size and her individual self-worth, which really only intensified her depression and led her to seek yet more comfort in food. Nag, Martin (1998). Geniet Knut Hamsun – en norsk Dostojevskij[ Knut Hamsun the Genius – a Norwegian Dostoevsky] (in Norwegian). Oslo, Norway: Solum. ISBN 978-82-560-1166-7.

I finished Hunger five hours ago and still feel such overwhelming gratitude for Roxane Gay's writing; this memoir is my favorite 2017 read by far and one of those rare works that makes me so thankful for my ability to read at all. Hunger focuses on Gay's fatness, how being fat has affected her life in so many negative and unfair ways, and the rape she experienced as a twelve-year-old that precipitated her weight gain. She has an enormous talent for confronting complex, ugly truths in her writing and for injecting nuance into difficult subjects that we would rather see as simple. There are no clear victories or easy solutions in Hunger. Instead of cookie-cutter niceties, Gay offers a harrowing and honest account of her suffering, as well as the painful, slow, and necessary steps she has taken to heal. As writer Caroline Knapp does in her splendid memoir Appetites, Gay blends the personal and the political with great skill, showing how food intersects with feminism which intersects with sexism which intersects with trauma and so much more. A passage that exemplifies what I mean: Gay was gang raped at 12. She resorted to food to make herself less desirable. She built a literal fortress around her body. Ever since, she has tried to gain weight and received lots of negative talk about it from her family and friends. Didn’t stop there. She hid this secret and didn’t tell anyone. Even thought she deserved it. It's her journey about accepting herself and growing more comfortable in her body. Around and around we went through the same self-told narrative. She ate to protect herself, n

Major themes of the novels include distrust of authority (of adults and the government), class discrimination and caste, resistance, the ethics of entertainment, and most notably, the origins and effects of war. [20] Social inequality, unaccountable governance and violence against children have also been suggested as prominent themes. "In the world of the 'Hunger Games', the Capitol lives a life of extravagant wealth and consumption. Meanwhile, out in the 'districts', millions of people work dangerous jobs with low pay. As the Capitol wallows in excess, the districts can barely afford to feed their children." [21] Author Suzanne Collins also mentions the themes of " just war", gladiatorial combat and hunger. [22] War as a result of climate disaster, and the power and illusions of television have also been cited as themes. [23] Others have mentioned revolution and rebellion as themes. "Although it’s... aimed at young adults, it presents potentially quite subversive ideas of mass revolution, economic sabotage and the populist fight against oligarchy." [24] Reception Critical reception Hungry is a story about food, class and families and the distance travelled between a terraced house in Carlisle and multimillion-pound London restaurants that quake at your arrival. Above all, it’s a gorgeous, unsentimental tribute to the relationship between Grace Dent and her father, George. It’s about the ways in which love is communicated in a working-class family that doesn’t do “touchy-feely” and what happens when a man who has never been one for intimate talk slowly slides out of reach into dementia. Alma Katsu has taken one of the darkest and most chilling episodes in our history, and made the story even darker, even more terrifying. I swear I’m still shuddering. A fantastic read!” —R.L. Stine, author of the Goosebumps and Fear Street series