The brilliant Catherine Chidgey has gone over all gothic again in her recurring theme of slightly futuristic, weird British seaside amusement parks. I’m not sure she’s doing the places any favours, and for that I salute her. Horrible institutions, tacky and sad, harking back to a bygone age where people were fed pathetic entertainment and nasty hot dogs without irony. The theme of this one is “A Simpler Time” which sounds a bit Trumpian. Make these miserable little seaside towns great again. I’m a bit concerned that Chidgey’s recent books, from Axeman, Pet, Book of Guilt and now The Starving Bride, all focus on the manipulation of vulnerable people. Please, Catherine, enough psychological darkness. Would you please write us a beautiful, classical LOVE STORY? You know – a passionate couple, torn asunder by forces outside their control but (will they? won’t they?) do eventually get their happy ever after. Surprise us. It’d be brilliant.
I did find The Starving Bride kind of compulsive reading, and I hate to say that because it makes me no better that the people who queue up to see our girl Hazel starve herself. It’s a horrible scenario: an exhibit where a “bride” is locked in a glass box for a 40 days fast, laid out like Sleeping Beauty. Spectators make return visits to watch her fade away, and they comment on her body. It’s a paid gig, ostensibly to make enough money for her wedding. However Hazel is just meant to be acting and there’s no sign of a groom. There is, however, a lion enclosed in the exhibit who prowls around outside her glass box looking hungry, and a large wedding cake within Hazel’s reach so people can watch her fail in her resolve and start stuffing it down. She wont. It’s fake.
The whole thing is meant to be fake. At night, with the show closed, she has a tiny apartment adjoining the exhibit where she hides, well stocked with what passes for food in this world: instant noodles and snacks. But our Hazel has a past, one that spun out of control, and now, in these focused circumstances, she finds something she can control. Her starvation.
There is more to the book: a crumbling tower; a local councillor whose warnings are ignored; Hazel’s old friend; her boss. And the lion is always prowling around. But it is the slow, unbearable diminishment of Hazel that we watch, and in that we are joined by stick thin girls for whom Hazel is a hero, a woman who manages to eat nothing at all.
Weird book. I hated the topic but found I couldn’t put it down.
