Sacred Hunger

So I decided to read Barry Unsworth’s “Sacred Hunger”. It’s a novel about an 18th century British slave trading ship (I should have read back-to-back with “And a Bottle of Rum”) and it shared the Booker Prize in 1992 with “The English Patient” which I really loved. I think my future wife read TEP and lent it to me or urged me to read it. We were working at the same place in NYC, a small bond trader. Here’s the thing though. We were just friends at the time. Very. Close. Friends. So I was pining for this woman, but she had a boyfriend. So I bought a copy of Jeanette Winterson’s “Written on the Body”, wrote some emotionally charged words in the front and gave it to her. She gave it back to me with a yellow sticky that basically told me where to go. But I won out in the end. I didn’t see her for ten years and then I called her up out of the blue. Then we moved to LA. Then we got married. Lucky me. There’s more to the story than that but that’s what I remember about TEP, besides the fact the film ruined a great book. Too much Willem Defoe. Oh, and I was cleaning out an old box in my closet here last year and guess what I found the sticky. I still have the sticky.

So I started the book, about fifty pages in. Big font, small chapters. The writing is a little old school for my taste but I like a good sailing/adventure story so I’m sticking with it. Plus, it’s 630 pages. When I finish it I will have completed 12 percent of my task. I have no recollection who gave me the book. I’m thinking it might be my mom or my sister. But I know I received it one Christmas along with “Perfume” which, of course, is also on the list.