Hunger, by Elise Blackwell
Little, Brown and Company, 2003
Elise Blackwell's Hunger is a surprising little gem set during Leningrad's "hunger winter" of 1941-42. German troop have surrounded the city; no food shipments are permitted. Parents starve themselves so that their children can eat. People prostitute themselves for sugar.
Despite the food shortage, the botanists at the Research Institute of Plant Industry in Leningrad have dedicated themselves to protecting the collection of thousands of seeds and plant specimens from destruction or thieving.
Blackwell notes in her introduction that this is a work of fiction based on the true dedication of the courageous scientists who protected the specimen collection of what is now called the Vavilov Institute, during the German siege of Leningrad.
The story unfolds from the point of view of one of the male scientists, who seeks solace through the women he loves and his reminiscences of past travels. The narration of the story is ethereal much of it feels like dream sequences, thanks to the lyrical prose of Blackwell:
Cold in the skin. Cold in the bones of the arm. Cold in the eyes. Cold in the ribs. Feet gone from feeling, from knowledge. There was pain only in odd places, centered in a heavy, aching groin but otherwise intense in its asymmetricality, the finger of one hand, two knuckles on the other, a nostril's interior, a shrapnel-sized piece of jawbone, a small concentration in the kidney.
In the end, we are left feeling emotionally torn as the survivors of the hunger winter who were pleased to be alive, yet wracked with guilt to have outlived children or spouses. Blackwell has given us a wonderfully thought-provoking and complex story of human nature in the face of extreme adversity.
