Primordial Soup

Kate is the anorexic narrator and second-generation Lithuanian immigrant to Florida whose penchant for vampirism indicate's Leunens delightfully perverse reading of the family dynamic. Kate's mother is coarse and insensitive, leaving her daughter to wallow in dangerous fantasies. When her mother sees Kate fighting with her own sister, she laments ' You're own flesh an 'blood!', conjuring the image in Kate's head of her sister as 'red meat'. If you combine this with the sores on Christ's body, it isn't surprising that these 'intensive doses of theology and genealogy did not assist my cold-blooded eating of flesh'. There is nothing cold-blooded in Kate's sexual experiments, which combine flesh and hunger.' Lilian Pizzichini in The Independent on Sunday 'This wickedly funny novel hurtles along at a furious pace. Leunens captures the confusions and horrors of adolescence brilliantly, and her use of metaphor is masterful.' Elizabeth Judge in the Times 'Sexuality and revelation are also on the agenda in Christine Leunens's remarkable debut novel, Primordial Soup, a black comedy about the fleshy nature of life. Exploring Kate's fast-and-gorge existence and her ambivalence towards men, it is a memorable book that manages to be a page turner and a stomach turner in equal measure.' Phil Baker in The Sunday Times 'Former fashion model Christine Leunens serves up a messy bowl of sex, food and faith in Primordial Soup. Kate Lester lives in Florida with her sister and their batty Lithuanian mother, Olga, who feed them offenses like rabbit with prunes (on Easter, no less ) and will not tell them the facts of life. To say that Kate winds up with issues would be an understatement, from her first orgasm (which happens during communion) to her first sexual encounter, she views her body with shame, revulsion and ignorance, imagining herself and everybody around her as meat. Kinky, grotesque and very funny, this is not for the faint of heart.' Publisher's Weekly