A review by abbie_
White Hunger by Aki Ollikainen

dark sad medium-paced

2.0

Award for the most aptly titled book goes to… White Hunger, which is indeed mostly just descriptions of snow and how hungry people are. I suppose at a stretch it’s a bit more than that, but not much. It’s Finland, there’s famine, there’s a lot of barren wasteland covered in snow. It follows one desperate family as they travel towards St Petersburg where there’s supposedly food, braving the brutal terrain and begging for food wherever possible. But for the women there’s even more to be feared than just hunger and cold weather, as the men in this book seem to think access to a woman’s body is their right. There are some horrific rape scenes in these short pages, and I can’t say I thought they added a great deal. 

I do like a bleak book but I think this one was just on the wrong side of bleak for me.