Mother for Dinner
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021
‘Outrageous satire . . . extremely funny, weirdly touching’ – Guardian
‘A work of genius’ – Scotsman
‘Close-to-the-knuckle farce with a big beating heart’ – Daily Mail
This is the story of an unusual family. Though they are nothing like yours, you will recognize them. They are the last Cannibal-Americans. And they have a problem.
When their mother dies, twelve children gather to dispose of the body in the traditional manner . . . by eating it. But can they follow the ancient rituals of consumption? Is their unique cultural heritage worth preserving if it's this gross? And what about dietary requirements - one of them is vegan. Surely it can't be this hard to do the right thing?
Mother for Dinner is a dark comedy about modern life and its many difficulties.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Auslander (Hope: A Tragedy) turns his taboo-shattering satiric gaze to cannibalism in this outrageous, salty take on contemporary culture. Seventh Seltzer is a New York City book editor weary of sorting through submissions for the "Not-So-Great Something-American Novel" and their increasingly niche subjects (e.g., "Gender-Neutral-Albino-Lebanese-Eritrean-American"). Seventh is particularly attuned to the "shackles" of identity, having been raised in the persecuted Cannibal-American ("Can-Am") community, which ritualistically consumed its dead. He is the seventh of a dozen surviving children of a monstrous matriarch, Mudd, a bigoted force of nature determined to restore her diminished people to prominence. When she dies, however, many of her children have long since given up cannibalism. Yet, promised a hefty inheritance on the condition that the rite is performed, Seventh and his bickering siblings unite to tackle the grisly task. The bilious narrative trips along its grotesque way, treating readers to the picaresque history of Can-Am immigrants from an unspecified "Old Country." While Auslander harps a bit more than necessary on the alternately constricting and comforting "boxes" of identity, and Seventh's misanthropic epiphany about human nature is a tad facile, more effective is the riotous dissection of cultural formation and a community's hunger for meaning. Auslander soars in enough places to make this worth the price of admission.
