A Literary Life

Sacred Hunger (Barry Unsworth)

It took me an embarrassing long time to read this book for several reasons: more home improvement (I know, the excuse is getting old), addiction to the book on tape I recently downloaded and the fact that it was overdue at the library. You see, when a book is overdue and can no longer be renewed, you’re paying by the day. At least for me, this makes it more of a challenge and I’ll never throw in the towel. NEVER!

Long story short — unlike my excuse — the book sat with it’s book mark 80 pages from the end for almost two weeks, even though it was an artful and compelling novel, a book worthy of it’s Booker Prize. Tackling vast philosophic and historical issues like imperialism, capitalism, slavery and racism, you might think that the tale would be preachy or snobbish. But instead, the author fleshes out characters that feel right at home in this (to the modern mentality) foreign, brutal and immoral world. The rich son of a trader whose religion is commerce and revenge. His cousin, a fallen-from-society doctor who signs onto a slaving ship, writing himself off into whatever pain he can find. The conscripted sailors, the seasoned and brutal captain, the cringe-worthy depictions of Africans sold into slavery.

All told in a somewhat formal style. In fact, it reminded me quite a bit of the writers of the time period of the book — probably an intentional touch meant to drive the reader deeper into the past. However, the prose lacked the confusing flourishes of the period enough to lull a modern reader in, and the style was often striking and original.

(The slave ship was) a member of a vast fleet sent forth by men of enterprise and vision all over Europe, engaged in the greatest commercial venture the world had ever seen, changing the course of history, brining death and degredation and profits on a scale hitherto undreamed of.

That the ship was a mere corpuscle in this nourishing bloodstream was not easy to imagine for the men aboard her. To them she was a universe of routine tasks and routine sounds — the bell marking the half hours, shouted orders, the way of the waves, the wincing tune of the timbers as they were exercised by the sway of the sea. Forces less tangible but equally determinate worked on the men and they were set in relation to one another in sympathy or antipathy, as happens in all communities.

The title refers to trade, to the blindly ambitious commercial and imperial endeavors of the day, which were sanctioned by king, country and God.

Money is sacred, as everyone knows, he said. So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it.

To take something as vile and despicable as slavery and immerse a reader in a world in which the practice is defended, is seen as common sense and morally just — and then to slowly have the characters wake up to a sense of disgust … I believe it takes an author of real talent to succeed at such a large undertaking, especially without denigrating or simplifying the historical figures involved, keeping them human and complex.

Deep? Yes.  Light reading? No. But Sacred Hunger (I agree with what I’ve heard) is just as worthy of critical praise and readership as the other book that shared the Booker Prize that year, The English Patient. And I think it could make just as good of a movie, too, replete with lots of ocean panoramas and violence, exotic locales and people and ideas.

And I think it’s worth the $2.10 I owe the library for the privilege of reading this intense novel.

Award-Winning, Book Reviews, Fiction |