BLUE HUNGER
VIOLA DI GRADO, translated by JAMIE RICHARDS
© 2023 Bloomsbury
$27.00
216 pages

Shanghai was not her first choice for where to live. Sometimes, she wasn't really even sure why she came there, except that it was Ruben's dream.

For months and months, her twin brother spoke of Shanghai, showed her maps, talked of a life as a chef living in a high-rise apartment, and taught her a little bit of the language. She never fully understood why Ruben loved China, and she never thought to ask before her only sibling —her other half — died.

She was brushing her teeth when it happened. Now, weeks later, she was in his favorite city, a teacher of Italian languages in a Chinese culture, alone, friendless. Then she met Xu.

It happened at the nightclub called Poxx, and she later wondered, with a thrill, if Xu had been stalking her. Xu claimed that she was a student in the Italian class, but though she was usually good with faces, she didn't remember the slender, "glorious" woman with milk-white skin and luminous eyes.

She did remember the first place she and Xu had sex.

It was a hotel, but Xu liked it outside, too: in public, on sidewalks, in abandoned buildings, and in crowded nightclubs. They took yellow pills together, and slept together in Xu's squalid apartment. She told Xu she loved her but never got a reply, except that Xu starting biting.

Xu had used her teeth all along, but she started biting harder.

Soon, she was bleeding, bruised from Xu's bites, and seeing people in the shadows, and she began to understand that Ruben wouldn't have liked Xu at all...

There are a few other things about this book you'll need to know.

Reading Blue Hunger is like watching a Stanley Kubrick movie. It's surreal, kind of gauzy, and loaded with meanings that are somewhat fuzzy until you've read a paragraph several times — and even then, you're not quite sure about it.

Author Viola Di Grado writes of sharp, unfinished mourning with a grief-distracting obsession layered thickly on top, and of control and submission. And while the chapters are brief, they feel too long — but also not long enough. There are so many questions left dangling within the plot of this story, so many small bits unsaid — but also too much information of the mundane sort. You'll feel somewhat voyeuristic, until you notice that the sex scenes are humidly uber-fiery but not very detailed.

Overall, then, Blue Hunger is different but compelling, short enough to read twice, quickly. It's lush and dreamlike. Once you've started, you won't be able to stop thinking about it.