"Chapter one, in medias res: Deni, his father, and his brother are in a car stalling on the tracks before an oncoming train. This is, of course, intentional - Deni's father revs the engine just in time to escape a grisly death in the wilderness of British Columbia. And so we are introduced to the violent, dreamy complications of Cures for Hunger, which bridges crime and adrenaline with misty-eyed poetics and fragile longing. The men in his story are tense; poised at the crux of competing needs: to be tough, to nurture, to win, to be free, to be something more than a fishmonger, a thief, or a thug. Bechard has written, in essence, not just his own story, but a conceptual enactment of multiple masculinities. Through writing about growing up under the shadow of his poor, criminal Quebecois father, Bechard tells the story of what it's like to negotiate the conflicting, inarticulate demands of what he should be, and what a man should be."
Publisher Milkweed Editions
Publication Date 2012/05/15
Section New Hardcover - Biography / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Jamie C.
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9781571313317
As a child growing up in rural British Columbia, Deni Bechard had no idea that his family was extraordinary. With a father prone to racing trains and brawling, and a mother with interest in health food and the otherworldly, Deni finds pleasure in typical boyish activities: fishing for salmon with his father, and reading with his mother.
Assigned to complete a family tree in school, Deni begins to wonder why he doesn't know more about his father's side of the family. His mother is from Pittsburgh, and there is a vague sense that his father is from Quebec, but why the mystery? When his mother leaves Deni's father and decamps with her three children to Virginia, his curiosity only grows. Who is this man, why do the police seem so interested in him, and why is his mother so afraid of him? And when his mother begrudgingly tells Deni that his father was once a bank robber, his imagination is set on fire. Boyish rebelliousness soon gives way to fantasies of a life of crime, and a deep drive for experience leads him to a number of adventures, hitching to Memphis and stealing a motorcycle; fighting classmates and kissing girls.
