Grief is hungry

T. Greenwood examines loss in her fifth novel, The Hungry Season. It is the story of Samuel Mason, his wife Mena, and their son, Finn. Sam is a famous, best-selling novelist, but then a tragedy transforms his life and that of his family. Suddenly, he’s stuck with an unbreakable case of writer’s block and a mind that won’t quit, and everything that was once familiar is now strange to him. Mena and Finn feel the immense pain, too, because they can no longer live as they once did and are famished for “the before.” Absence and the hunger for what used to be is the ongoing theme in this narrative. Greenwood captures your attention with her amazing literary style, relatable characters and the use of hunger as a metaphor that stands for something deeper than the simple avidity for a cupcake. Instead, the emptiness of starvation is what we feel when we grieve.