Horror novels based on historical events require a certain finesse. They also tend to be long. Up until the last hundred pages or so, I didn’t really like Dan Simmons’ The Terror, but it had an ending that redeemed the long hours of reading the bleak tale. I wondered if the same thing might happen with Alma Katsu’s The Hunger, although it was only about half as long. It also had been recommended more than once, so I had high expectations. I didn’t know what it was about, but opening the cover I discovered it was a fiction based on the Donner Party. Having read only cursory bits about what’d happened to that unfortunate group, my historian’s antennae began quivering as I read the names of actual people. To add to the already horrendous events that befell the actual group, Katsu introduces a set of monsters not unlike the wendigo, but with less charm.
Even before the party reaches the infamous Hastings Cutoff that ultimately doomed them to cannibalism and the death of about half the party members, the creatures attack and kill a boy. Once they take the Cutoff, the attacks become more obvious and some of the party members see them lurking in the night. They fear fire, however, preferring their flesh raw. Dissensions among the group are fictionalized to lovers’ spats or affairs and I started to find the narrative somewhat forced from that point on. I did learn a lot, by reading about what actually happened, as I went along. Part of my brain wants as much historical veracity as possible, and it wasn’t forthcoming. Too many improbable things step in to make this tale not scary or disturbing, but pure fantasy.
I’ve disagreed with the critics before. Everyone has their own taste when it comes to novels, and those of us who read scary books are no different. To me it seems that the horrors of being snowbound and having to resort to cannibalism are scary enough. It isn’t really even suspenseful (as the New York Times claims it is) because you know that it will end in tragedy. The end result of all this is to make me want to read a book on what actually did happen to the Donner Party, which, I suspect, will be frightening enough. If the connection with wendigo mythology were drawn out, there could be a powerful symbolism here. Instead, I found the book long, if well-written, and not very scary. I did wonder who, if anyone, would survive. Historical novels can be written in the horror vein, when handled with sufficient finesse. It’s the burden of being a stickler for history, even in fiction.