Athena K's Review - Sacred Hunger

This is my first re-read in my Booker challenge, so I have to admit to already knowing I love this book.  I think this might have been my fourth time through, but having the focus of needing to write a blog post helped me enjoy the writing in a new and deeper way.

This is a novel about the triangle trade in the mid 1700s, and is it about the struggle between greed, profit, humanity, enslavement, liberation and civilization - some pretty heavy themes that I traditionally associate with American literature (though Unsworth is British).  So much about this book is exquisite:  the depth of the characters, the fluxuating narration style, the the vivid metaphor and rich language, and the incredibly moving story.  The juxtaposition of Erasmus and Paris was a perfect tool in playing out the contradictions and moral pitfalls of the various aspects of the slave trade.  And even though there are probably a hundred named characters in the novel, each character, no matter how minor, came across as a complete and real person, with a purpose in the narrative.

One of the aspects of the writing that really struck me this time around was the prevalence of metaphors related to slavery, and the various ways in which people and even objects can be shackled, caged, and enslaved - including and especially the drive for profits, the Sacred Hunger of the title: 

It is always through arbitrary combinations that experience enslaves the memory.  New shackles were being forged here, in the light-filled loft, amid smells of oil canvas and raw hemp and tar, the creeping fringes of the sail-cloth, his feelings for Sarah Wolpert and for his father.

I first read this for part of an interdisciplinary college course called "Slavery and Labor in Film and Literature" - and it was by far the best part of that class.  It is still one of my favorite of all of the Bookers I have read - and I couldn't recommend it more highly.

Rose City Reader's Review: Sacred Hunger, 1992 Winner

Barry Unsworth won the 1992 Booker Prize for Sacred Hunger, his incredible novel about independence, madness, duty, dominance, justice, suicide, loyalty, greed, hope, commerce, power, family, culture, desire, violence, education, marriage, politics, philosophy, self-doubt, government, fatherhood, adventure, friendship, and pride.

And slavery. Specifically, British slave trade in the 1700s. William Kemp stakes his failing fortunes on a slave ship to ply the "Triangle Trade" of selling English manufactured goods to African slavers, slaves to Jamaican sugar plantations, and sugar to England. He installs his nephew, Matthew Paris, a heretical and bereaved scientist seeking to escape his tragic past, as the ship's physician.

When things go horribly wrong with Kemp's plan, his son Erasmus vows to restore the family fortunes and good name, culminating in his obsessive journey to the swamps of colonial Florida to find a rumored Utopian society of ex-slaves and sailors, governed, he fears, by his hated cousin.

Whew! There is a lot going on in the 600+ pages of this gorgeous and horrible and wonderful story. To say that Sacred Hunger is engrossing barely touches the surface. True, Unsworth's main characters live in their heads more than their hearts – little is shown about their emotions beyond anger or pride. Instead, Unsworth focuses on the doubts and hopes that drive William, Erasmus, and Matthew, explaining that "doubt is the ally of hope, not its enemy, and together they made all the blessing" these men had in their tragic lives.

Sacred Hunger is a book that will keep any reader thinking for a long time after the amazing plot concludes.

(Review also posted on Rose City Reader.)

J.G.'s Review - Sacred Hunger

This book snuck up on me. Given its plot -- an English merchant sends a ship into the Golden Triangle of 1750s slavery, taking trade goods to Africa, bartering for slaves there and transporting them to the New World, and planning to return to England with rum or sugar -- I was not eager to read it. It promised to be a long slog of 630 pages, made essential by my quest to read all the Booker winners and my participation in the Battle of the Prizes - British Version.

Instead, this book turned out to be a rare joy. It is handsomely crafted, with a nice framing device, the thorough but not leaden flavor of historical research, and interesting and thoroughly humanized characters, including Erasmus Kemp, the son of the ship's owner, eager to make his way in his father's world of commerce, and Matthew Paris, Kemp's disgraced cousin who travels on the ship as its doctor and conscience. Unexpected twists and turns lead to a splendid mystery/confrontation/resolution that involves my very own backyard of colonial Spanish Florida.

I read all this with growing excitement that a prize-winning English novel could smoothly devolve from Liverpool via Africa to my home state, within the same general fictional time frame as other books I am eager to read (Bartram's Travels and Hitt's Wekiva triology). All roads lead to Florida's wilderness for me these days.

Even if you are not similarly enthralled by Florida, this novel offers a rich reading experience far beyond the events of its plot. The fate of the Liverpool Merchant turns out to involve the varying motivations of men of commerce, the challenges of navigating social conventions when they contradict one's own beliefs, and the possible perfectibility of human social and personal relationships in a primitive paradise. Unsworth's ability to stay true to his tale while skillfully exploring these larger issues makes this novel one of the Booker's best.

Excerpt:

Hughes the climber, on lookout in the crow's nest, heard the shouted orders and felt the ship quiver through her length as she was brought closer to the wind. A mackerel sky was building to westward, with dark banks of stormbreeders low on the horizon. But there was some sun still, lying flat on the sea. He watched the gulls which earlier that day had found the ship. They were following on the starboard side, fewer now, but in good number still, which made him think they were in for no more than light squalls. . . . He noted again how the birds rode the wind, how the dying sun flashed on their breasts. Below them the sea was riven with gashes. The wind was rising. He looked away from the birds at last, to eastward. The horizon on that side was pale and clear still and Hughes saw, faint and ragged but unmistakable, the shapes of land. He cupped hands to mouth and bawled the fact to the darkening sky.

Note: this review is also posted on my blog, Hotchpot Cafe.

Matthew's Review - Sacred Hunger - 1992

After immediately finishing Rites of Passage, a novel about a long sea journey, I decided it would be wise to start another novel about a long sea journey, this time, an even longer journey and novel! I picked up Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth, joint winner of the 1992 Booker Prize, and after what seems like an eternity, I finished it.

Sacred Hunger is primarily concerned with the Atlantic slave trade of the 18th century, personified by two cousins, one the son of the ship owner who enjoys a life of privilege and stays in England, and the other, a disgraced surgeon seeking to debase himself by joining the ship. For most of the novel, we follow their different paths, in stunning detail, as the surgeon and the ship pick up slaves in Africa. However, things change irrevocably when a storm blows the ship off course, and the crew mutiny. We pick up the two cousins' stories a decade later and they finally meet in circumstances no one could predict.

As aforementioned, the detail is stunning. Unsworth has clearly done a massive amount of research. This novel is a masterclass in historical fiction. Paramount to this, Sacred Hunger is obviously a postcolonial novel, at once looking back and rewriting history, but there is no easy conclusion that Unsworth comes to.

The sacred hunger of the title is greed, greed justified by social standing, government, economic systems, and civilization itself, it seems. Unsworth dismantles the justification with the last third of the novel, but never making any monochromatic conclusions. There is no way to discuss this without spoiling this last third of the novel, which I will not do.

Suffice it so say that Unsworth's novel is never easy in terms of morality, but it is always easy and enjoyable to read. Sacred Hunger doesn't drown the reader in archaic and period language, and the author never embarks on long passages as pastiches from 18th century novels, such as Pynchon's Mason & Dixon.

The novel does also function as a gripping adventure story. Even with all the theme and metaphor mired in murky morality, the novel remains exciting for most of its length. This is a very hard balancing act and Unsworth pulls it off mostly.

However the novel isn't perfect. For most of the novel I found the cousin who stayed in England to be more interesting than the cousin on the ship, or rather, the main character on the main thrust of the plot. I liked the thread of the ship, but certainly Unsworth's depiction of capitalism and greed in London was more captivating (pun not intended). The ship's thread suffers from too many characters and too many deaths, and the best part of the journey, the mutiny, is relayed by flashback and reminisces, robbing it of impact.

Sacred Hunger, despite these qualms, is a great historical novel, and one that should be taught alongside other postcolonial novels. It is rich in period detail, rich in theme and character, and never takes the easy way out of its exceedingly difficult and sticky moral situations.

Laura's Review - Sacred Hunger

Sacred Hunger
Barry Unsworth
629 pages

The flood of cheap manufactures, for which the people have no need, destroys their industries. They become dependent on this trade and the demand for goods can only be met by enslaving their fellows. To do this they need muskets in ever increasing quantities -- which we supply. And so we spread death everywhere. But that sacred hunger we spoke of justifies all. (p. 328)

In 1752, Liverpool businessman William Kemp finances a ship to engage in the Triangle Trade: trading arms for slaves in Africa, and then trading slaves In Jamaica for sugar to be brought back to England. Kemp recruits his nephew, Matthew Paris, to serve as the ship's physician. Paris, recently released from prison, is eager to start a new life. Kemp's son Erasmus resents Paris' new status, holding a deep grudge against him for petty childhood "crimes."

The ship sets sail, with all the horror expected of such a journey. Paris earns the respect of some crew members, but is barely tolerated by the captain. Meanwhile, the younger Kemp leads a life of relative ease, courting a young woman to be his bride. Events in both men's lives take unexpected turns and, on these cliffhangers, the reader is propelled forward to 1765. By this time Kemp is a prosperous businessman himself and lives in the cocoon of ideals that allows someone to believe slavery is just, and that they are entitled to the luxuries that result from the profits. Paris is living in a kind of utopian society forged on ideals of equality, which are fragile and difficult to sustain. Kemp's self-centeredness and profit motive cause him to seek out Paris to act on his inexplicable need for revenge.

Barry Unsworth packs so much into Sacred Hunger. The page-turning saga of the slave ship, with all its detail about living conditions and man's inhumanity to man, could be a book unto itself. The conflict between Paris and Kemp could also stand alone. Together they make for a gripping, emotional, and memorable read. Highly recommended. ( )

My original review can be found here.

Trevor's Review of Unsworth's Sacred Hunger

"Soon after midnight the first of the land breeze began making along the river and Thurso ordered sail to be got up and all to be made ready for purchasing anchor. At two they weighed an got out to sea, the wind by this time giving a good offing. In the cover of darkness, as quietly as possible, the Liverpool Merchant began to steer a course south-eastward. but when the ship met the deep sea well, the rhythm of her movement changed and the people in the cramped and fetid darkness of the hold, understanding that they had lost all hope of returning to their homes set up a great cry of desolation and despair that carried over the water to the other ships in the road and the slaves in the holds of the ships heard it and answered with wild shouts and screams, so that for people lying awake in villages along the shore and solitary fishermen up before dawn, there was a period when the night resounded with the echoes of lamentation."

Sacred Hunger is a difficult read--passages like this one are piercing, painful to really digest and admit. But this is an important book. Unsworth's insight into the complex motives behind greed, dominion, mercy, and kindness make this much more than a simple story about a slave ship in the mid-1700s. In fact, in this book we see these emotions and attributes come up in almost all relationships: between man and woman, between captain and sailor, between English and Native-American, between one tribe and another, between parents and children. Its a complex world, but Unsworth makes it flow smoothly. Also, even though there are many relationships which all are used to further themes, this book is far from contrived. The characters and their relationships are real and familiar--that's what's scary.

In Sacred Hunger there is mutiny aboard a slave ship. The whites and blacks begin their own community in south Florida. Meanwhile, the ship owner's son single-mindedly seeks revenge against the crew, particularly against his cousin, the ship's doctor. But it is not that simple. Even while the new community is attempting to grow into a free society, where there are no distinctions between blacks and whites, Unsworth shows just how difficult such a task is.

In the dialogue, Unsworth has the ability to show the feelings of the slave traders while instilling pure irony:

"'Tis a terrible trade, them not in it will never know the hardships, to see your profits dribblin' in the sea an' nothin' you can do."

Such passages are amusing at the same time they evoke reprehension. But in a frightening way they made me think about how many awful things we do today without quite understanding how ridiculous our position is. Then there are the illuminating, yet discouraging passages:

"Nothing a man suffers will prevent him from inflicting suffering on others."

This book recognizes the difficulties inherent in trying to live in an equal society. In fact, some of its interesting passages deal with building a community through rhetorical strategy. While I didn't feel like it was a fully-fleshed theme, story-telling and legend-making definitely are important, especially since the story is based on the ramblings of an old mulatto many years after the story has ended:

"But mainly he talked--of a Liverpool ship, of a white father who had been a doctor aboard her and had never died, a childhood of wonders in a place of eternal sunshine, jungle hummocks, great flocks of white birds rising from flooded savannahs, a settlement where white and black lived together in perfect accord."

This is a great contender for the Best of the Booker over the last forty years. I wish it had more attention, especially considering this anniversary year for the US and last year's for the UK--200 years since the abolition of the slave-trade across the Atlantic. If only it had truly ended then--but Unsworth's book offers some bitter insight into why it didn't.
5 stars out of 5.

You Must Read This: Sacred Hunger

On March 24, National Public Radio's All Things Considered broadcast a review of the 1992 co-winner, Sacred Hunger. This was part of the "You Must Read This" series, which airs regularly on the program. I had not heard much about this book before, but author Ethan Canin's review certainly piqued my interest.

Have you read Sacred Hunger? Post a comment ... or better yet, post your review!