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A Carnivore's Inquiry
by Sabina Murray
Published by Grove Press
Copyright 2004
Hardcover, 294 pages; ISBN 0802117694

When we meet Katherine, the winning-and rather disturbing-twenty-three-year-old narrator of A Carnivore's Inquiry, she has just left Italy and arrived in New York City, but what has propelled her there is a mystery. Katherine's occasional allusions to a frighteningly eccentric mother and tyrannical father suggest a somberness at the center of her otherwise flippant and sardonic demeanor. Soon restless, she begins journeying from literary New York to rural Maine and Mexico City, trailed, everywhere she goes, by a string of murders. As the ritualistic killings begin to pile up, Katherine comforts and inspires herself by meditating on cannibalism in literature, art, and history. The story races toward a hair-raising conclusion, while Katherine, and the reader, close in on the reasons for both her and her mother's fascination with aberrant, violent behavior. This is a novel of ideas, a shocking and enlightening modern Gothic, and a brilliantly subtle commentary on twenty-first-century consumerism and Western culture's obsession with new frontiers. Told in highly intelligent prose reminiscent of Patrick McGrath or Angela Carter, A Carnivore's Inquiry is a sly, unsettling exploration of the questionable appetites that lurk beneath the veneer of North American civilization.

(Publisher's release)

OOV Bookshelf 2004

OCTOBER 2004 FEATURE A Carnivore's Inquiry by Sabina Murray Filipino Women Writers in English: Their Story 1905-2002 by Edna Zapanta-Manlapaz Miracle Fruit: The Poems of Aimee Nezhukumatathil A Child in the Midst of Battle by Evelyn Berg Empie and Stephen H. Mette Sarabihon Volume 2 edited by T. Erestain Missing Mangoes: For Filipinos And Those Who Love Us by Marcelline Santos-Taylor Rosario de Guzman-Lingat, 1924-1997: The Burden of Self and History by Soledad S. Reyes JULY 2004 FEATURE Communities at the Margins: Reflections on Social, Economic, and Environmental Change in the Philippines edited by Hiromitsu Umehara & Germelino M. Bautista Cuentos Filipinos by Jose Montero y Vidal Hinabing Gunita (Woven Memories): Filipinos in the UK, an oral history project Edited by Jamie Tapales Oakes, Carmila Legarda Alcantara, Maria Gonzalez, Candy Quimpo Gourlay, and Ed Maranan Menage a Trois with the 21st Century by Eileen R. Tabios Remembered Songs and Other Stories by Norma Miraflor Uyayi by Chinchin Gutierrez Novemberly by Theo Gonzalves The Art of Harana—Serenades for Guitar by Florante Aguilar Kundiman ng Katipunan by Elynia S. Mabanglo Stephen Y.S. Shey MARCH 2004 FEATURE Dream Jungle by Jessica Hagedorn Marginal Bliss by Carlomar Arcangel Daoana Behind the Blue Canvas by Eileen R. Tabios Ulos: 4 na Dula by Arthur P. Casanova Mga Kuwentong Maranao by Frank G. Rivera Wife or Worker: Asian Women and Migration edited by Nicola Piper and Mina Roces World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability by Amy Chua Smaller and Smaller Circles by Felisa H. Batacan