A Carnivore's Inquiry

As provocative as the title may be, the novel is more so. Katherine seems bored even though her place in the world is precarious; she seems composed even though episodes would prove otherwise. As she makes her way across North America, so does a chain of bizarre murders that cut a frightening swath of carnage. Punctuated by almost clinical accounts of cannibalistic moments in history, this chilling story can veer sharply between being intriguing and leaving one cold. Wendy Hoopes captures the removed, almost otherworldly, quality of the novel's storyteller, whose carnivorous interests take a sinister turn. L.B.F. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Starred review from May 31, 2004
That 23-year-old Katherine Shea is an unreliable narrator is evident from the first pages of Murray's mesmerizing new novel (after the PEN/Faulkner Award–winning story collection, The Caprices
). As she describes the way she picks up hapless author Boris Naryshkin on the Manhattan subway, coolly manipulates and moves in with him, drains him of money and sleeps with other men, Katherine's lack of conscience and absence of affect obviously go beyond neurotic and into psychotic territory. Yet she is intelligent and witty in her solipsistic explanation of her needs and behavior, even as she hints at the manifestations of her mother's insanity and reveals the margins of her own unstable personality. Her fascination with cannibalism, and her deep familiarity with its depiction in art (Goya, Gericault), literature (Dante, Poe, Melville), folklore (Hansel and Gretel
, the Tale of Bisclaveret
) and history (the Donner Party, the voyage of the Essex
) is revealed in tandem with the events of a journey that takes her across the country from New York to Mexico, with crucial scenes played out in a cottage in Maine. Katherine's hegira becomes increasingly sinister, and Murray paces her psychological thriller with consummate control, keeping the reader enthralled through subtle suggestion and a scattering of grisly details. But the author has a darker purpose. More than the story of one deranged woman's obsession, the novel and its brilliant subtext hint at the ways American society devours the weak, while building a case for a blood hunger in human nature. The tension of the last chapter is followed by a grim suspicion; the reader will go back to the first pages to confirm the worst. Agent, Esmond Harmsworth. (July)

Forecast:
Readers will be hooked by Murray's classy treatment of her sexy-sinister subject matter; this could become a minor goth classic. The author will get a bit more exposure when her film screenplay,
Beautiful Country, starring Nick Nolte and Tim Roth, is released in 2005.

September 6, 2004
Katherine Shea, a highly intelligent 23-year-old, may be the most unusual protagonist in recent fiction. After returning from a self-guided year of study in Italy, Katherine takes up with Boris, a middle-aged Russian novelist. When her affair with Boris bores her, Katherine escapes to Maine and then to Arizona, where she finds a box of bones bequeathed to her by her deranged mother. She continues to travel, but everywhere she goes, the people she meets end up dying. Reader Hoopes captures Boris's dolorous Russian accent and also the Maine burr and Southern twang of Katherine's subsequent lovers. But her biggest achievement is Katherine, an untethered and unreliable narrator. Hoopes's subtle rendering of Katherine's wily intelligence is impressive given how much Katherine conceals while she ingenuously relates her story. As the book wanders into stranger territory, Katherine distracts her audience with long, scholarly asides about art, literature, history and mythology, all dealing with a common theme: cannibalism. Hoopes tackles these passages with ease, adopting a haughty French accent for Katherine's rendition of the Tale of Bisclaveret
and a macabre Italian voice for the Inferno
's Count Ugolino. That Katherine's great secret remains inscrutable until the very end is a testament to Hoopes's light-handed interpretation of this twisted tale. Simultaneous release with the Grove hardcover (Forecasts, May 31).