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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Swain, H. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
For fans of The Giver , a futuristic thriller with a diverse cast.
In Thalia's world, there is no more food and no need for food, as everyone takes medication to ward off hunger. Her parents both work for the company that developed the drugs society consumes to quell any food cravings, and they live a life of privilege as a result. When Thalia meets a boy who is part of an underground movement to bring food back, she realizes that there is an entire world outside her own. She also starts to feel hunger, and so does the boy. Are the meds no longer working?
Together, they set out to find the only thing that will quell their hunger: real food. It's a journey that will change everything Thalia thought she knew. But can a "privy" like her ever truly be part of a revolution?
Author Notes
H. A. Swain 's books for young readers include Me, My Elf and I , and Josie Griffin Is Not a Vampire . Hungry is her first novel for teens. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Swain's near-futuristic dystopia explodes onto this well-trod genre with a fresh idea, tense plotting, and relatable characters. Earth's resources, ostensibly decimated by wars and superstorms, have vanished, along with any flora and fauna. Mega-corporation One World swoops in to salvage the remaining humans from starvation by altering their DNA so that they no longer experience any pesky hunger pangs. One World also supplies all nutrition through a formulalike substance called Synthamil. In this world in which any type of food is illegal, Thalia, 17, begins to suffer unexplainable spasms in her abdomen. Instead of being shipped off to a "specialist" to eradicate her natural hunger pangs, as was wont to happen, she seeks out the truth behind the hunger and One World's monopoly on food. She teams up with a non-"privy," Basil, who leads her further into the resistance movement than she would have thought possible. Thalia is faced with a decision-do the easy thing or do the right thing, all while battling her genetic "mutation" that makes her mouth water and her stomach growl. From the Inner Loops to the Outer, to the Hinterlands and beyond, Thalia's journey is fast-paced, scientifically plausible, and scarily possible. The mood is tense, curious-but never relaxed. Swain completes a unique tour de force with Hungry, one that requires readers to examine current society, their place within invisible and sometimes all-too-visible hierarchies, and the consequences of genetic engineering. Fans of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (McClelland and Stewart, 1985) and Lois Lowry's The Giver (Houghton Harcourt, 1993) will flock to this story-Amanda C. Buschmann, Atascocita Middle School, Humble, TX (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Amid the array of YA dystopian romance available, Swain (Josie Griffin Is Not a Vampire) stands out for sheer clamor. Thalia Apple, 17, is a child of privilege in a marketing/surveillance-bombarded, corporate-controlled world. Thalia has no compunction about hacking and sabotaging the corporation that makes her privileges possible, but she does feel shame about one thing-she's hungry. Since the sensation of hunger was declared to be eradicated decades earlier, and all nutritional needs are met with Synthamil, the atavistic rumbling of her stomach makes her a target for mental and genetic reprogramming. Thalia privately acknowledges the necessity, but she's reluctant to be sent away for "inpatient treatment"-she's just met a boy, and he makes her tremble in an equally forbidden way. Basil knows astonishing secrets, like how to recreate the smell of chocolate, and his friends, called Analogs, are part of an underworld that challenges the corporate hegemony more profoundly than Thalia's fellow hackers ever dreamed. The plot unfolds in fairly predictable ways, but the sensation-saturated world that Swain describes gives the story fresh interest. Ages 13-up. Agent: Stephanie Kip Rostan, Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
In a world in which food is gone and corporate-controlled science has eliminated its necessity, ultra-privileged Thalia begins to feel hunger, sparking a journey that ends in revolution. Thalia's cluelessness and repeated endangerment of her friends are hard to swallow, weakening the story's romance, but the world she inhabits is fascinating and well developed, with a have-versus-have-not conflict that will engage readers. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
An alluring adventure in a future without food.Thalia's grandparents were farmers, but climate change and war have wreaked havoc on food supplies. Now, nobody farms, and nobody eats. Everyone drinks the nutritional beverage Synthamil, provided by megacorporation One World. Regular inoculations containing benzodiazepines and something unexplained that Thalia's mother invented suppress hunger, sexuality and moods. Talking about food"forno," or food pornois forbidden. But Thalia's stomach is growling: She's not supposed to be, but she's hungry. Leaving behind her pristine, hologram-landscaped neighborhood, she finds (and falls for) Basil, a boy in the outskirts who's created a machine to generate food aromas. Swain's romantic food descriptions trounce the dryly presented benefits of this society (there's supposedly no starvation or crime, which isn't true but also hardly seems to matter stacked against juicy fantasies of roast chicken and french fries). Thalia's brown-skinned, but privilege here is all about class; being a computer-hacking "privy" herself, Thalia's shocked that an underclass lives in poverty and that desperate people from all classes are so hungry they're eating dirt. Thalia and Basil's activism with underground networks gets them labeled by One World as outlaw terrorists; they run away and stumble into a cultlike secret community that holds disturbing ties to the city. Despite some loose worldbuilding and predictability, this is a page-turner that wants a sequel.Emotionally satisfying dystopia with a generous helping of forno. (Dystopian romance. 14-17) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
With a combination of synthetic nutrition and hormone-controlling inoculations that stop the body's hunger response, science has eradicated the need for food in Swain's crowded but compelling dystopia. Thalia Apple, 17, is the daughter of influential scientists working for One World, the corporation that developed Synthamil, ended global starvation, and gained total market dominance. Thalia rebels in small ways, like joining the hacker group Dynasaurs to sabotage One World's pervasive cyber marketing, but she doesn't truly question the system until she has a reason: she gets hungry. This shameful sensation of a growling stomach and gnawing emptiness leads her to another underground group, where she meets Basil, who shows her what it's like to be poor and dependent on a profit-driven corporation for nourishment. With solid, transparent writing and timely social commentary, this wild premise works quite well. Though Thalia and Basil follow a predictable arc toward romance and revolution, the privatization of government functions, especially medicine and pharmaceuticals, is a pivotal issue, and Swain semiplausibly imagines the implications.--Hutley, Krista Copyright 2014 Booklist