Famished by Anna Vaught ~ A Recipe Blogpost Review

‘In this dark and toothsome collection, Anna Vaught enters a strange world of apocryphal feasts and disturbing banquets.’

INGREDIENTS

• 25g of dried madness
• 300ml of warmed passion, diced erratically
• A generous cupful of foul thoughts (check the back of your pantry)
• 400g of delicious words
• 1 or 2 tsps of mixed emotions
• 50g of old musty dictionary pages (‘W,T or F pages are probably most suitable)
• For the glaze: A wash of quiet darkness

METHOD

Preparation is recommended on an empty stomach.

Mix the wet ingredients together in a bowl. Do this in a careful manner, creating a revolting soup-like consistency that can easily travel through ones veins.

Next, gently combine the dry ingredients together into an old urn or suchlike. There’s bound to be one lurking on the mantelpiece somewhere. Stir with a gnarled and boney finger until it resembles an odd, dusty, cement-like mixture.

Mix both wet and dry ingredients together and divide into 17 unequal portions. You are now ready to create your worst food nightmares.

‘…the tripe blinked at her and writhed in its nasty pool of white sauce…’

HOW DOES IT TASTE?

Comparable to a Cindy Lauper album, Famished has got to be the most magical, colourful, intelligent, bonkers, grotesque mix of stories I’ve ever had the (dis)pleasure to read. For reasons unknown, it just reminded me of how fascinated I am by Cindy Lauper in that you can’t help but find it entertaining, albeit very weirdly so.

Anna Vaught is a novelist, poet, essayist, reviewer and editor. She is also a secondary English teacher, and that shows spectacularly throughout the entire book. I spent a great deal of time looking up so many words in the dictionary, I felt like I was back in school. (Would I get an A* Ms Vaught, if you’re reading this?!)

Famished was a learning curve, a strange experience, a delight.

‘Will you gently suck, or will you shovel up with the liquorice, drunk on the acid-carbonate reaction with your own saliva?’

Famished was also heartfelt, relatable and revolting. Did it whet my appetite? It certainly did. But it didn’t make me hungry. Did it ruin my dinner? No! Funnily enough, it took me back to dinner times at home with my parents in the 80’s. Tinned mandarin segments with condensed milk for pudding was supposed to be a treat!

I must have quite a strong stomach because out of all the darn right disgusting things in this book, there was only one thing that really turned me over.

These four words – ‘…sea-foam milky tea…’ 🤢

I’ve only really started reading short story collections in the last couple of years, so I’ve got quite a list to get through. Many classics and a few contemporary, but I don’t think I’ll come across anything quite like Famished again.

Although…and I’m saying this with great relish; there’s hints of SHIRLEY JACKSON in Vaughts writing. YES, that’s what I said. I’ve compared a modern author to JACKSON, the QUEEN OF MACABRE.

Famished is staying on my forever shelf, and Ms Vaughts’ vulgar little tales are living beside Shirley Jackson. They can be like ‘two sisters, secreted in the deeper recesses of darkness…’

Famished is going on my Best of 2020 Goodreads shelf

Bunny by Mona Awad

‘We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny.’

I’m a bit all over the place with this book. I’d call it a ‘yo-yo read’. It’s sickly sweet, ugly pretty, cutely foul and oddly addictive. I was up and down throughout, with awkward ‘do I even like this’ moments. On numerous occasions I was indeed loving it in all its twisted hilarity.

Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort – a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other ‘Bunny’.

But then the Bunnies issue her with an invitation and Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole.

Bunny was an unusual choice for me as it’s got Young Adult/Fantasy genre written all over it – not my usual choice. But this book feels like it not only blends genres, but bends them too. Into very uncomfortable positions.

⤴️You can treat yourself to this Bunny Zone sign for your wall/garden/bedroom/dustbin area by clicking on the sign!

It’s as funny as hell in places and has a fair few horrific scenes. On Goodreads someone described it as ‘one of the most demented books I’ve ever read’. I dig a bit of weirdness in my books, so my FOMO got the better of me!

I’m a member of The Ladies of Horror Fiction Group on Goodreads and there was a choice of books for September to vote for. Bunny won, so I thought, oh why not, let’s do it! I’m glad I did, but I’m still not sure I even liked it much!

I’m in the UK and the story is American, so I found certain things that I didn’t connect with. The education system in the USA is something I know nothing about. Also certain pop culture went over my head, so perhaps things were a bit lost on me.

The quirky characters were cracking, the humour was dark and dry, it was shockingly funny on countless occasions. It was written in such a way that is felt ‘chatty’ and flowed from page to brain* very easily.

*whilst mashing it up repeatedly.

The Sunday Independent quotes it as ‘Mean Girls with added menace’ and I completely agree.

At three quarters through I felt it was just playing with me. My feelings went from ‘this is weird’ to this is ‘REALLY effing weird’. Then ‘it’s so hilarious but still weird.’ Then ‘uh-oh, I’m getting a bit bored of the repetitive bits in the middle here.’ And the final part was just ‘whaaat??? – I’m not sure I even ‘get it!’

Talk about rollercoaster! It’s like nothing I’ve read before ever. But I think I liked it.

Would I read it again? No. Would I recommend it? I would, yes. But it’s definitely not for everyone. Maybe it would sit better with an American reader, and certainly would be more appreciated by someone twenty years younger than myself.

Apparently the rights are sold to AMC for a possible TV-film adaptation. I think it would be better on screen, I’d watch it, but only because I’ve read it.

It comes across as a weird, fantastical teen/YA story, with elements of horror that is cleverly put together. I enjoyed the characters and their strange behaviours, the writing was extremely good but overall I’d say it is an above average ‘Bunny Tail’ deserving of 3/5 bunnies.

I’ll leave you with a couple of lines which made me pull a right dodgy face;

‘A pause so pregnant it delivers, consumes its own spawn, then grows big with child again.’

‘She looks at us all in her probing, intensely gynaecological way.’

Urgh! That’s just ‘orrible!!

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark

I’m reviewing this book in a way I feel is fitting to my reading experience. It’ll be to the point, crass in places and slightly scatterbrained!

Let’s keep it simple, for those of you that aren’t aware of my reading tastes, let me explain.

I LOVE reading weird, dodgy, questionable stuff. I go from demure gorgeous historical fiction to books only suitable for strong stomached wrong’uns.

Eliza Clark’s debut is all kinds of wrong. And so what?! I bloody loved it!

‘I wake up a full twenty-four hours later on my sofa. A bag of chips completely defrosted in my lap.’

📸 A forthright debut novel with hints of Trainspotting, American Psycho & CJ Skuses’ Sweetpea

📸 A dark, voyeuristic peek into the art world, relationships, drugs, gender & sexuality

‘Eddie, Eddie, Eddie from Tesco, shall I compare thee to a heavily discounted piece of meat on the reduced shelf at the end of the day? Thou art cheaper and, hopefully, fresher.’

📸 A narcissistic female protagonist who’s vulnerabilities surface throughout the story

📸 A diverse cast of characters that brings strong relationship dynamics from all angles

‘…why they don’t do condoms like cup sizes – A, B, C – rather than letting people guess what size they are based on…’

📸Riddled with a dark and dirty humour, I choked on my own spit a fair few times

‘I’m glad she’s still quantifying how much she wants to do stuff by how many dicks she’d suck to do it.’

📸 As a 40-something reader, the Urban Dictionary was my best friend

📸 Not recommended for the more sensitive reader. Don’t touch it with a barge pole if you’re easily offended.

📸📸📸📸/5

Acronyms #2 – Or, translation to English of my previous post.

So I’ve been getting so many questions asking me what on earth I was waffling on about on yesterday’s post Acronyms – Or WTF does that stand for?

(I haven’t at all, in fact one person has shown a bit of intrigue, mainly trying to fathom out what I had for dinner. You know who you are. EVA, from Novel Deelights!! 😂)

So, just to milk it within an inch of its life, here’s the translation you’ve all been desperately waiting for.

I’ve read LORD OF THE RINGS, WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, PAPERBACKS FROM HELL and LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.

I thoroughly enjoyed THE DA VINCI CODE, ANGELS AND DEMONS and THE LOST SYMBOL by DAN BROWN. But I’ve not got around to reading ORIGIN yet, his latest one.

I haven’t read, and I don’t think I would read A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES or TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE. They’re not really my genre choice, which would explain why I didn’t have the foggiest!

I listen to ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS PRINCE, ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA, GUNS AND ROSES, IRON MAIDEN, and FLEETWOOD MAC, but wasn’t overly keen on NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK back in the day.

For dinner tonight I’m making PORK CHOPS and HAGGIS with POTATOES and MIXED VEGETABLES. And don’t forget the all important PEPPER SAUCE. My mans Scottish, so HAGGIS is a regular meal staple in my house.

Whilst creating my culinary masterpiece I shall be sipping a VODKA AND DIET COKE, (I actually had 4. Oops 😬) but I’m also a bit partial to the odd GIN AND TONIC. My all time favourite tipple has got to be RED WINE though.

TO ALL THE WINE I’VE DRUNK BEFORE,

This GRAPHICS INTERCHANGE FORMAT is for you.

As a teenager I fell in love and sent letters to my hearts desire SEALED WITH A LOVING KISS 💋💋✉️💋💋

Intrigued, interested or just darn right annoyed by my acronyms and would like to know WHAT THE FUCK I’m on about?

Comment below and I’ll let you know what things stand for. Or don’t bother. DO I LOOK LIKE I GIVE A FUCK?

Until next time,

TALK TO YOU LATER

HAPPY ACRONYM-FREE WEEKEND EVERYONE!!