"Voltaire got it right in Candide, I believe: a bit of decency and the physical labor and small rewards of cultivating a garden from seed are the best we can strive or hope for to dull the pain of lost expectation, or to cover our vices of weakness, boredom and need"

A retelling of the great hunger in Leningrad in 1941 is particularly poignant as the world faces severe food shortages and the United Nations call for an international response. It is a reminder of the pain and horror and de-humanizing effect of hunger. Will the scientists preserve the precious seeds for their nation or will they, like the main character, give in to tempation and in the end does it really matter?
This is a lovely short read but I wondered why the main character's sex life seemed to be as important as his struggle with hunger? Perhaps it was as important to him, it just doesn't seem very likely to me nor is it likely that starving women kept throwing themselves at his feet.

Having reflected on that last statement I think I withdraw it as a criticism. It is rather a part of the author's careful crafting of this character, and we can jump up at any point and yell selfish for any number of reasons. The author actually points out through her character that hunger does not generally bring out the best in people. It is an aching primal pain and though short, this story brings it to life.

The pacing is lovely, and the memories of previous trips collecting seeds for wonderful plants and delicious food is a vivid contrast to the starvation in Leningrad. The richness and variety of melons in South America, for example, is lovingly described and I remembered being in Ecuador in 2000 and being stunned by exactly the same thing, melons and fruit I had never seen before, beautiful and ripened on the vine. Then we are back in Leningrad.
A great first novel by a very accomplished writer. ( )

This book is not about hunger, unless the hunger you think of is the hunger of a soul for forgiveness. Indeed, there is a great deal about food hunger in this book as it takes place during the "hunger winter" in 1941 in Leningrad. If I ever learned of this event in Russian history, it faded from memory. I can't imagine what the suffering was like.

There is one line I have copied to my reading pillow (a small pyramid shaped pillow made of plain muslin that I write quotes all over).

She was a woman who cared more about what she was right about than about being right. That I knew about her, though I could not claim to understand her. Even now, I cannot claim to have understood her. (page 121)

There is also a bit about Voltaire's Candide about gardens that reminds me I want to someday read the book, but also that I need to understand gardening.

And then there is the book's format...slender in pages and width. Slender but not sparse. Not like the people who lived through the hunger winter, or the memory that still lives. ( )

A slim volume of impressive power and beauty. A botanist suffers through the "hunger winter" of the seige of Leningrad and survives...but only by sacrificing his values and his allegiance to his work. Based on a real historical event, "Hunger" plumbs the depth of guilt and explores the possibility of redemption. ( )

It's not until you finish this story and think about it for a while that it hits you what it was all really about. When a novel can do that, then it's a good one -- and this novel will probably have me thinking for a while.

The story is told from the perspective of an elderly man, looking out his window in an apartment in New York. The man, whose name I don't believe was ever mentioned, is reliving a horrible time in history: the siege of Leningrad (the modern city of St. Petersburg), which lasted nearly three years from 1941 to 1944. During the first year, after the Nazis had blockaded all but one route in and out of the city, and because nothing of this sort had ever happened before, and people were unprepared, thousands froze and starved to death because of the lack of any way to leave. This is the backdrop of the novel; the story is about a group of scientists who worked in a genetics laboratory under the directorship of Nikolai I. Vavilov. As the time of starvation set in, Vavilov & his assistants made a pact to preserve the hundreds of thousands of seeds that they had gathered from all over the world, no matter what happened. Many of them starved to death surrounded by these seeds, but the story is told by one man who focused on survival and doing what he felt had to be done in order to live.

The story also draws interesting parallels between ancient Babylon and Leningrad during the siege -- read these parts very carefully because they also highlight, as the author notes, "what does and does not change about human life with changing leaders and gods -- and on the tragedies of mighty civilizations." (from the book, Reading Group Guide)

I really enjoyed this book and I definitely recommend it. No one ever knows what they would or would not do in desperate times and desperate situations - and this book really brings that point across. An excellent story. ( )