Mother for Dinner

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Diving into the new lives of the 12 siblings and their conflicting views on their cultural heritage, this story gets chaotic and can be sometimes hilarious. Everyone else was climbing into their boxes, writing Keep Out on the outside and sealing themselves up inside. Además y sorprendentemente, se incluyen reflexiones bastante profundas sobre la identidad, la idea de grupo y nación, el pasado y la tradición. It means he reads a lot of work with a lot of hyphens, and if they are published Time magazine hails them with “It was about time…” The reason for his grievance is that Seventh was born into the most shunned, marginalised and feared of all minorities. It is good to see where the reviews printed in the book come from - all intelligent and well respected sources (except one maybe?

He never loved her, but the sense of guilt and responsibility he feels--to her and to his people and to his "unique cultural heritage"--is overwhelming. The novel is 260 pages with no chapter breaks in the narrative, although the text does have frequent pauses. The novel does use our language of eating to great effect: Mudd will torment bullies by asking if they can have them for dinner, or telling children she’d like to gobble them up).

Mas mete canibais modernos (bom, a história é sobre canibais na Nova Iorque de hoje) e, apesar de ser sempre contado com um certo exagero cómico, há algumas passagens que podem dar a volta ao estômago aos mais sensíveis. And yet, and yet: the end of the novel is a wistful, regretful, even sentimental paean to the importance of heritage, of the right to decide, of the right to change. This is not unusual, as the Seltzers are Cannibal-Americans, a once proud and thriving ethnic group, but for Seventh, it raises some serious questions, both practical and emotional.

Auslander, in interview, described his rejected ultra-orthodox upbringing as being raised “like veal,” and this novel captures and analyses the ambiguities around what one is given and what one is offered magnificently. turns his taboo-shattering satiric gaze to cannibalism in this outrageous, salty take on contemporary culture. turns a jaundiced eye toward ethnic identity and the burdens of tradition as they concern a different oppressed minority group. I've not read anything by Auslander before this, and this is definitely not what I thought it was - I guess I thought social parody by way of body horror and straightforward storytelling - but I find that I have very much enjoyed being push-pulled in verious directions by this mulling, this thought experiment, this conversation amongst rabbis, wherein nothing is solved, nothing is concluded, we simply lay out various points for consideration without nailing them down too tightly or judging them without examining their various facets. Mother for Dinner showcases rather analogous situations and attitudes to Hope: A Tragedy, one of my absolute favorites, but ultimately didn’t come together as successfully for me.

The tale is, of course, a parody with each sibling’s (and therefore society's) traits in receipt of satire. Sytuacja wymyka się jednak spod kontroli, bo ciało matki waży ponad 200 kg, a właśnie jest bardzo upalnie. Si a este concepto general le sumamos el caso particular de una familia disfuncional que se ve en la tesitura de reunirse y pelearse entre ellos por ver si merece la pena comerse a su madre para heredar el dinero, el autor refleja de una manera tan divertida, pero con bofetadas de pura realidad, muchos de los aspectos más intrínsecos de la naturaleza humana.

Auslander is a timely reminder that literature can still be daring, provocative and controversial, and I read it while gagging with both laughter and nausea. In 1914, Julius Seltzer left the paradisiacal “Old Country” with his sister Julia, who pretended to be his wife and traveled with him to Detroit to work for Henry Ford. The assimilated children in a Cannibal-American family must eat their mother upon her death as per tradition. Författaren själv växte upp i Monsey, New York, där många ortodoxa judar bor, och det märks att hans bakgrund varit viktig för berättelsen.En algún momento, el hincapié en la breve historia de los caníbales se me ha hecho un poco repetitivo. Pues que obtendríamos una novela tan divertida, a la par que realista y deprimente, como es “Mamá para cenar”. This book raises huge questions about many areas of society - culture, sexuality, family, race among others - and I love it for that but I wanted less effort. The story is hilarious although it falls at the end with the deed only half done but reading thoroughly recommended. om den är skriven på ett humoristiskt och groteskt sätt så tyckte jag den var superintressant och smart på ett Orwell-liknande sätt mer än att den var rolig.

They have come together to witness the death of their mother and then to eat her afterwards based on the rules on the Cannibal principles with which they have been raised. All that is known for certain is that somewhere (no one can remember where), on some particular day (no one can remember which), something terrible happened to their blessed ancestors (no one can remember what), and it is important that they never forget it, whatever it was and whenever it happened, and that they curse the names of those who perpetrated whatever it was that was perpetrated, whoever they were, and whatever they did. Even before starting the book you will see humour, in the author's description and other introductory information which points towards a good reading experience. Qué pasaría al reunir en una historia a un pueblo caníbal que representa el concepto de minoría social y ponerlo en una situación en la que para poder heredar la herencia de su madre fallecida deben comérsela siguiendo la tradición de su pueblo que está prácticamente extinto? I found this book mostly entertaining, although it definitely got repetitive toward the end and the ending of the novel felt a bit unsatisfying, almost as if Auslander himself wasn't really sure how to close out his extended parable about Cannibal-Americans.The family have all tried to assimilate to being “American” in different ways, and part of the family mythos is that of Julius, who came from the unspecified Old World and worked in the Ford Factory, with its “Americanization” programme; here turned into the horrors of a pageant involving the immigrants voluntarily going into “the Melting Pot. Seventh has his unusual name because his mother (known to all as Mudd) was an identitarian fanatic determined to give birth to 12 sons through whom the fading Cannibal nation would be reborn. Of practical concern, she’s six-foot-two and weighs over thirty stone – even divided up between Seventh and his eleven brothers, that's a lot of red meat.