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  • Reading Carnivore Diet

  • Julia Slavin's Carnivore Diet is evocative of a series of dream sequences. The story unfolds through the point of view of two characters - Dylan Dunleavy and his mother Wendy. Things begin as we become acquainted with Dylan, a teenager who has a job voicing a cartoon rat. Trouble is, his voice has g ... Continue

    Julia Slavin's Carnivore Diet is evocative of a series of dream sequences. The story unfolds through the point of view of two characters - Dylan Dunleavy and his mother Wendy. Things begin as we become acquainted with Dylan, a teenager who has a job voicing a cartoon rat. Trouble is, his voice has gotten too deep and he cannot continue playing the character, a boy. That's not the crux of the story, though. Things get going when Dylan tells the reader about a mythical creature known as the chagwa. Oddly, attacks taking place in his neighborhood bear a strong similarity to those supposed to have been done by the chagwa.

    When the perspective switches to Wendy's, we get substantially more detail. She and Dylan have been left alone in their home as their father/husband is in jail for apparent improprieties committed as a senator. Problems get worse when the chagwa becomes real in their neighborhood, and sets its appetite on Dylan. Wendy medicates to cope, and Dylan is left in the lurch as he stresses about his lost job and the fact that he is the prey of choice for a creature that seems impossible to destroy.

    The book is compelling and almost impossible to put down until the final act, when things take a turn for the weird. It's probably strange to say that things turn weird in a book that is entirely odd to begin with. And yet, the abrupt change in tone just doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the book.

    I still definitely recommend Carnivore Diet for anyone who is interested in fresh female voices in fiction. If the concept of the chagwa intrigues you, the book will definitely be rewarding.

    

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• ― moogle said on Apr 6, 2007 about the Hardcover edition| Add your feedback

A wildly imaginative tragicomedy about a fantastical animal on the prowl and its affection for one troubled family. "Carnivore Diet gleams with grisly absurdity…bracingly inventive."—Time Out New York

Wendy Dunleavy is desperately trying to hold her family together. But with her politician husband in prison for corruption and her son, Dylan, the former child actor, running unsupervised through the orderly avenues of northwest Washington, she may not have enough muscle for the task. And that's before the first sighting of the mysterious chagwa, a famished and unruly menace that not only breaks up the all-important Beltway soirees but also seems to have intentions toward Dylan. Life might be easier if she weren't addicted to sedatives like the rest of the frightened population. Life might be easier if it weren't always a diet of misery, hilarity, longing, and surprise in a nation of hucksters, self-deluding lobbyists, and pundits.

Known for her "haunting and inventive" storytelling (Harper's Bazaar), her laugh-out-loud repartee, and her surreal transfigurations of the commonplace, Julia Slavin has unleashed a hilarious and disturbing tale where the reach of fantasy is as long as the arm of the federal government. Reading group guide included.

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