The Savages
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
They'd love to have you for dinner
Sasha Savage is in love with Jack Greenway - a handsome, charming, clever... vegetarian. Which would be acceptable if it weren't for the fact that Sasha's family are very much 'carnivorous', with strong views to boot. Behind the respectable family façade all is not as it seems. Sasha's father Titus rules his clan with an iron fist, and although her mother Angelica never has a hair out of place, her credit card bills are shocking and her culinary skills are getting more... 'adventurous' by the day. As for Sasha's demonic brother Ivan? Well, after accidentally decapitating a supermodel in their family bathroom his golden boy image is looking wobbly. To the outsider the Savages might look like the perfect family, but there is more to them than meets the eye. When the too-curious private detective Vernon English starts to dig for darker truths, this tight knit family starts to unravel - as does their sinister and predatory taste in human beings...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Happy families are all alike except, perhaps, the one in Whyman's (the Carl Hobbes books) wickedly funny and mildly disturbing novel. Aside from their secret appetite for human flesh a tradition dating back to Grandpa Oleg's gobbling up a neighbor during the siege of Leningrad in WWII the Savage family suffers from fairly normal stresses. Mrs. Savage struggles to get her spending under control while 15-year-old Sasha contemplates vegetarianism, to the shock of her parents and the delight of her new soon-to-be-vegan boyfriend. When a schlubby private investigator starts digging too closely into Mr. Savage's business dealings and the apparent suicide of a model last seen alive at the Savage home, there's no telling what, er, juicy truths might be revealed. Whyman's taste for the bizarre is grislier than most, and a gruesome finale is particularly unsettling. But it's his choice phrasing (the family's victims are "free range") and spot-on comedic delivery, seen especially in 12-year-old Ivan's pointed practical jokes, that make the book so digestible. Ages 9 up.
