The Hungry Season

October 5, 2009
In her fifth novel, Greenwood calls grief by another name—starvation. The Mason family, devastated by the loss of 16-year-old Franny, spends the summer in Vermont, far from home in San Diego. Renowned novelist Sam Mason cannot conjure the words that used to come so easily to him before the death of his daughter: “the words are too thin, as fragile and brittle as bones.” Sam can no longer connect, especially not with his wife, Mena, and begins to waste away. Hunger proves to be a powerful metaphor for the family’s loss and desires although means of emotional escape are predictable: Mena considers adultery, while Finn, Franny’s twin, smokes marijuana. Saving this story from convention is Dale Edwards, a wacky college student and fan of Sam’s novels who writes letters telling Sam she has an advance from a publisher to be his biographer. Her gluttonous trek across the country to find her favorite author livens up the narrative, magnifying that this is intended as a deeply psychological read. But Greenwood’s epilogue wraps up the mess a little too neatly.