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Eat Only When You're Hungry
Alternate Cover Edition for 978-0143113492
A father searches for his addict son while grappling with his own choices as a parent (and as a user of sorts)
In Lindsay Hunter’s achingly funny, fiercely honest second novel, Eat Only When You’re Hungry, we meet Greg—an overweight fifty-eight-year-old and the father of Greg Junior, GJ, who has been missing for three weeks. GJ’s been an addict his whole adult life, disappearing for days at a time, but for some reason this absence feels different, and Greg has convinced himself that he’s the only one who can find his son. So he rents an RV and drives from his home in West Virginia to the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, the last place GJ was seen. As we travel down the streets of the bizarroland that is Florida, the urgency to find GJ slowly recedes into the background, and the truths about Greg’s mistakes—as a father, a husband, a man—are uncovered.
In Eat Only When You’re Hungry, Hunter elicits complex sympathy for her characters, asking the reader to take a closer look at the way we think about addiction—why we demonize the junkie but turn a blind eye to drinking a little too much or eating too much—and the fallout of failing ourselves.
A father searches for his addict son while grappling with his own choices as a parent (and as a user of sorts)
In Lindsay Hunter’s achingly funny, fiercely honest second novel, Eat Only When You’re Hungry, we meet Greg—an overweight fifty-eight-year-old and the father of Greg Junior, GJ, who has been missing for three weeks. GJ’s been an addict his whole adult life, disappearing for days at a time, but for some reason this absence feels different, and Greg has convinced himself that he’s the only one who can find his son. So he rents an RV and drives from his home in West Virginia to the outskirts of Orlando, Florida, the last place GJ was seen. As we travel down the streets of the bizarroland that is Florida, the urgency to find GJ slowly recedes into the background, and the truths about Greg’s mistakes—as a father, a husband, a man—are uncovered.
In Eat Only When You’re Hungry, Hunter elicits complex sympathy for her characters, asking the reader to take a closer look at the way we think about addiction—why we demonize the junkie but turn a blind eye to drinking a little too much or eating too much—and the fallout of failing ourselves.
209 pages, Paperback
First published August 8, 2017
116 people are currently reading
6090 people want to read
About the author
Lindsay Hunter
20 books439 followersLindsay Hunter received her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She co-founded and co-hosted the groundbreaking Quickies! reading series, an event that focused on flash fiction. Her first book, Daddy’s, a collection of flash fiction, was published in 2010 by featherproof books, a boutique press in Chicago. Her second collection, DON’T KISS ME, was published by FSG Originals in 2013 and was named one of Amazon’s 10 Best Books of the Year: Short Stories. Her first novel, Ugly Girls, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in November 2014. The Huffington Post called it “a story that hits a note that’s been missing from the chorus of existing feminist literature.” Her latest novel, Eat Only When You’re Hungry, was a Book of the Month Club selection, a finalist for the 2017 Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, and a 2017 NPR Great Read. Along with the writer Alex Higley, she runs the podcast I'm a Writer But, a series about writers with kids, jobs, and/or lives, and how they make it all work (or don't). She lives in Chicago with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 318 reviews
February 7, 2017
The frailties of the human body and the human heart are laid bare in Lindsay Hunter’s utterly superb novel Eat Only When You’re Hungry. There is real delicacy, tenderness, and intelligence with which Hunter tackles this portrait of a broken family of people who don’t realize just how broken they are until they are forced to confront the fractures between them and within themselves. With this novel, Hunter establishes herself as an unforgettable voice in American letters. Her work here, as ever, is unparalleled.
September 3, 2017
After positive reviews and a nod from Roxane Gay, and being one of the Book of the Month picks, my Newest Literary Fiction group declared this as a buddy read for September. It's the first book I grabbed for the month.
Most of the time, the unlikeable, older characters with disappointing lives are side characters, there for pity or amusement. Or they are the central character on a journey. I suppose Greg in this novel is on a journey too, to try to find his drug addict adult son GJ (Greg Junior), but his ex-wife refers to the quest as a "gesture" more than believing it will help.
We get to know Greg quite well by the end of the novel - his dietary habits, his willful denial of his health concerns, his bad decision making, his tendency not to believe something until he's seen it for himself, his lack of change over the course of two wives, the way his life has deteriorated further since retirement. It's like seeing the longterm downside to a lack of selfcare, clueless parenting, and a lack of self-awareness in relationships. But Hunter writes it all in a way where I felt incredibly sympathetic towards all of them.
I did find myself wishing we had a chance to see into the minds of some of the other characters. Instead, we're stuck with the pieces Greg notices, and they are subtle, moments where he sees but doesn't absorb, and I think the way the author writes those bits was pretty genius.
Read into it what you will, but I could not help but completely picture my father in law as Greg.
Most of the time, the unlikeable, older characters with disappointing lives are side characters, there for pity or amusement. Or they are the central character on a journey. I suppose Greg in this novel is on a journey too, to try to find his drug addict adult son GJ (Greg Junior), but his ex-wife refers to the quest as a "gesture" more than believing it will help.
We get to know Greg quite well by the end of the novel - his dietary habits, his willful denial of his health concerns, his bad decision making, his tendency not to believe something until he's seen it for himself, his lack of change over the course of two wives, the way his life has deteriorated further since retirement. It's like seeing the longterm downside to a lack of selfcare, clueless parenting, and a lack of self-awareness in relationships. But Hunter writes it all in a way where I felt incredibly sympathetic towards all of them.
I did find myself wishing we had a chance to see into the minds of some of the other characters. Instead, we're stuck with the pieces Greg notices, and they are subtle, moments where he sees but doesn't absorb, and I think the way the author writes those bits was pretty genius.
Read into it what you will, but I could not help but completely picture my father in law as Greg.
September 10, 2017
2.5 stars
The blurb calls this book achingly funny and as I read I kept waiting to laugh or chuckle. Nope. Then I waited to be amused, or maybe even read something that put a smile on my face. But nope, not even one tiny little bit. I really don't get the reviews that call this book funny.
Greg, an obese, retired man in his late 50's, and obviously depressed, sets off in an RV to find his addict son who has gone missing. As he travels, he reminisces on his failures as a father to his son, and as a husband to both his ex and current wife. (How in the world he found two women to fall in love and marry him remains a mystery.) He also looks back on the painful memories of his childhood, clearly the source of many of his problems, as he also has his addictions.
Meanwhile, in the current day, this is quite an eventful road trip, with many mishaps and troubles. Greg is an unreliable narrator, but we don't find out until the end just how unreliable he is. Instead of being surprised or shocked, I just felt sad.
I normally gobble up novels about dysfunctional families, which is why this was my BOTM pick. But I found this book mostly just depressing. The subject matter and plot is interesting and timely, and the book is well-written. I saw where the author was going with the story, but I didn't see the point. Everyone with addictions has crappy parents and needs to face their demons and escape? We know that's a false assumption. Plenty of great parents have children who are addicts of one type or another. The book certainly highlighted the misery of people with addictions and their families, so maybe that was the point? I really don't know.
It's well written enough that I'd be interested to read what the author publishes next. I hope it's not quite so bleak. I don't need happy but I do need a little bit of hope.
The blurb calls this book achingly funny and as I read I kept waiting to laugh or chuckle. Nope. Then I waited to be amused, or maybe even read something that put a smile on my face. But nope, not even one tiny little bit. I really don't get the reviews that call this book funny.
Greg, an obese, retired man in his late 50's, and obviously depressed, sets off in an RV to find his addict son who has gone missing. As he travels, he reminisces on his failures as a father to his son, and as a husband to both his ex and current wife. (How in the world he found two women to fall in love and marry him remains a mystery.) He also looks back on the painful memories of his childhood, clearly the source of many of his problems, as he also has his addictions.
Meanwhile, in the current day, this is quite an eventful road trip, with many mishaps and troubles. Greg is an unreliable narrator, but we don't find out until the end just how unreliable he is. Instead of being surprised or shocked, I just felt sad.
I normally gobble up novels about dysfunctional families, which is why this was my BOTM pick. But I found this book mostly just depressing. The subject matter and plot is interesting and timely, and the book is well-written. I saw where the author was going with the story, but I didn't see the point. Everyone with addictions has crappy parents and needs to face their demons and escape? We know that's a false assumption. Plenty of great parents have children who are addicts of one type or another. The book certainly highlighted the misery of people with addictions and their families, so maybe that was the point? I really don't know.
It's well written enough that I'd be interested to read what the author publishes next. I hope it's not quite so bleak. I don't need happy but I do need a little bit of hope.
Read
August 1, 2017Appetites For Destruction
By Judge Nina Sankovitch
What is it about the word “addict” that triggers so many contrasting emotions? Pity, fear, anger, disgust, sympathy. And what about empathy? After reading Eat Only When You’re Hungry, the empathy I felt outweighed every other feeling. I came away weeping, laughing, and nodding in recognition.
After all, aren’t we all addicted to something? Why do some of us maintain balance while others fall so hard for so little? Lindsay Hunter poses these questions through the characters of the oh-so-dysfunctional family of Greg, an obese father with one son, one ex-wife, one current wife, an elderly father, and a dead (but still dominating!) mother. Whether it is booze, love, drugs, control, sex, or food, everyone in this family craves something, and for Greg and his son GJ (Greg Junior), the cravings—for food or for drugs respectively—are overwhelming.
When GJ goes missing, Greg decides to take decisive action and track him down. What follows is a road trip that plumbs the miseries of the cycle of addiction, of failure and remorse and repeat, but does so in language so beautiful and with a portrait of family so real, I could not help but hope against hope for the best. Every character stands on his or her own, unique and vital but also undeniably screwed up, with varying degrees of trying to come clean or happily living in denial.
I’d like to stay in touch with this family—because I care about them, even as they infuriated me. Spoiler alert: bad choices outweigh good ones in this novel. And yet the hope is there, no matter how many dead ends Greg reaches. Which is kind of a definition of addiction: bad choices, veiled hope, dead ends.
The fact that Hunter made me laugh with her sharp observations of human nature and her sly asides about the human frame (she gets us, inside and out), just makes this book more of a keeper, a treasure of a novel about family, and about the heartbreak, banality, and ubiquity of addiction.
Read more at https://www.bookofthemonth.com/select...
By Judge Nina Sankovitch
What is it about the word “addict” that triggers so many contrasting emotions? Pity, fear, anger, disgust, sympathy. And what about empathy? After reading Eat Only When You’re Hungry, the empathy I felt outweighed every other feeling. I came away weeping, laughing, and nodding in recognition.
After all, aren’t we all addicted to something? Why do some of us maintain balance while others fall so hard for so little? Lindsay Hunter poses these questions through the characters of the oh-so-dysfunctional family of Greg, an obese father with one son, one ex-wife, one current wife, an elderly father, and a dead (but still dominating!) mother. Whether it is booze, love, drugs, control, sex, or food, everyone in this family craves something, and for Greg and his son GJ (Greg Junior), the cravings—for food or for drugs respectively—are overwhelming.
When GJ goes missing, Greg decides to take decisive action and track him down. What follows is a road trip that plumbs the miseries of the cycle of addiction, of failure and remorse and repeat, but does so in language so beautiful and with a portrait of family so real, I could not help but hope against hope for the best. Every character stands on his or her own, unique and vital but also undeniably screwed up, with varying degrees of trying to come clean or happily living in denial.
I’d like to stay in touch with this family—because I care about them, even as they infuriated me. Spoiler alert: bad choices outweigh good ones in this novel. And yet the hope is there, no matter how many dead ends Greg reaches. Which is kind of a definition of addiction: bad choices, veiled hope, dead ends.
The fact that Hunter made me laugh with her sharp observations of human nature and her sly asides about the human frame (she gets us, inside and out), just makes this book more of a keeper, a treasure of a novel about family, and about the heartbreak, banality, and ubiquity of addiction.
Read more at https://www.bookofthemonth.com/select...
August 8, 2017
This is a short novel that somehow feels very long. Fifty-eight year old Greg—obese, listless, depressed—decides to rent an RV so that he can try to find his missing addict son GJ. For the entire novel we're pretty much in Greg's head. I typically love unlikable characters and I wish I could put my finger on why I didn't enjoy this one but I'm struggling.
The truth is that Greg is just as messed up as GJ in his own ways. He was a bad father and a bad husband to his first wife and he's currently a bad husband to his second wife. Throughout his several-day road trip down the southeastern coast, there are flashbacks to key parts of his life—how and when he met his first wife, GJ's gradual descent into addiction, and even Greg's own unhappy childhood. All these years it's been easy for Greg to channel his disappointment into GJ, but finally the time has come for him to confront his own failures head-on.
This is one of those books that has everything I normally enjoy—the observational prose, the deep character development, the dismal subject matter—but for whatever reason it didn't wow me. I think I just wasn't down with being stuck with Greg that whole time. It felt exhausting and repetitive and depressing and hopeless, which to be fair, is an apt representation of Greg's life.
I'm admittedly having a hard time writing this review and spending too much time trying to convey what didn't work for me. There were certainly things I liked about it. I'm not mad that I read it or anything. It's gritty and real and unsentimental, and those are all positives. It was a solid "good but not great."
The truth is that Greg is just as messed up as GJ in his own ways. He was a bad father and a bad husband to his first wife and he's currently a bad husband to his second wife. Throughout his several-day road trip down the southeastern coast, there are flashbacks to key parts of his life—how and when he met his first wife, GJ's gradual descent into addiction, and even Greg's own unhappy childhood. All these years it's been easy for Greg to channel his disappointment into GJ, but finally the time has come for him to confront his own failures head-on.
This is one of those books that has everything I normally enjoy—the observational prose, the deep character development, the dismal subject matter—but for whatever reason it didn't wow me. I think I just wasn't down with being stuck with Greg that whole time. It felt exhausting and repetitive and depressing and hopeless, which to be fair, is an apt representation of Greg's life.
I'm admittedly having a hard time writing this review and spending too much time trying to convey what didn't work for me. There were certainly things I liked about it. I'm not mad that I read it or anything. It's gritty and real and unsentimental, and those are all positives. It was a solid "good but not great."
couldnt-finish
September 18, 2018I made it halfway through.
I just don't care about what it's like to be a willfully-ignorant, 59-year-old overindulging misogynist who needs something to do with his nothing life so decides he cares about his son, a known addict who has been missing for over 3 weeks, and goes to find him. In a rented RV that smells like cigarette smoke.
The narrator irritated me as much as the story irritated me and I don't have time for that kind of nonsense.
Moving on.
I just don't care about what it's like to be a willfully-ignorant, 59-year-old overindulging misogynist who needs something to do with his nothing life so decides he cares about his son, a known addict who has been missing for over 3 weeks, and goes to find him. In a rented RV that smells like cigarette smoke.
The narrator irritated me as much as the story irritated me and I don't have time for that kind of nonsense.
Moving on.
September 22, 2017
I wish an extensive and painful root canal onto every single character in this novel.
Read
August 9, 2017An unhappy middle-aged man goes on a trip to find his missing son, but along the way, as he fills his aching heart with roadside junk food, he faces up to harsh truths about his own existence. Hunter is one of today’s smartest writers and she has written a powerful, sharp look at addiction and America.
Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/listen/shows/allt...
Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/listen/shows/allt...
September 24, 2020
A terribly obvious theme of "all in moderation" pervades everywhere (ie. the title itself). And addiction is a horrible disease: but also, glass houses, pointing fingers, throwing stones at sinners...
Well, sometimes mediocrity begets the same. In this tale of semi-authentic attempts at healing a shitty family, the sinner basically blames another sinner, all the while experiencing all the comforts he's garnered: basically the birthright of the White man. Oh, and you will witness the male Karen in action: all embittered rage pointed at all but himself! Skip this one.
Well, sometimes mediocrity begets the same. In this tale of semi-authentic attempts at healing a shitty family, the sinner basically blames another sinner, all the while experiencing all the comforts he's garnered: basically the birthright of the White man. Oh, and you will witness the male Karen in action: all embittered rage pointed at all but himself! Skip this one.
August 1, 2017
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a finished copy of this book for review purposes - all opinions are my own.
I read fiction for many reasons, the three main ones being entertainment, education and emotion - the 3 Es for me. I have decided to rate this book based on these because I am really struggling to express my active dislike for this book contrasted with my true appreciation for the writer's abilities and the literary nature of it. Because I do really appreciate what Hunter did with this story and I completely understand why she wrote it as she did. Appreciation and LIKE do not always go hand-in-hand, though, which is what I found with this EAT ONLY WHEN YOU'RE HUNGRY.
ENTERTAINMENT: I have to say that I wasn't entertained at all by the story and didn't see the humor that other readers describe. That's just me though - me as a reader. Every book has its reader, and in the entertainment category, I didn't feel it. EDUCATION - yes, I was educated. Educated in the feelings of the parent of an addict, but also in the feelings of an addict himself. And in the feelings of a man horribly uncomfortable with his every-largening body and his entire life. EMOTION.......here are my emotions after reading this book: depressed, dirty and rather sick to my stomach. This is a novel of excess, but the kind of excess I don't actually want to think about and described in an incredibly lurid way. There is nothing Hunter held back on in bodily descriptions and there were definitely parts that made me squirm and want to stop reading.
Was this a book I will recommend to friends as one I loved? No. Is this a book I will be thinking about (happily or not) for a long time to come and will refer to in book discussions? Yes. Perhaps that is the perfect summation of literary fiction as a genre.......
I read fiction for many reasons, the three main ones being entertainment, education and emotion - the 3 Es for me. I have decided to rate this book based on these because I am really struggling to express my active dislike for this book contrasted with my true appreciation for the writer's abilities and the literary nature of it. Because I do really appreciate what Hunter did with this story and I completely understand why she wrote it as she did. Appreciation and LIKE do not always go hand-in-hand, though, which is what I found with this EAT ONLY WHEN YOU'RE HUNGRY.
ENTERTAINMENT: I have to say that I wasn't entertained at all by the story and didn't see the humor that other readers describe. That's just me though - me as a reader. Every book has its reader, and in the entertainment category, I didn't feel it. EDUCATION - yes, I was educated. Educated in the feelings of the parent of an addict, but also in the feelings of an addict himself. And in the feelings of a man horribly uncomfortable with his every-largening body and his entire life. EMOTION.......here are my emotions after reading this book: depressed, dirty and rather sick to my stomach. This is a novel of excess, but the kind of excess I don't actually want to think about and described in an incredibly lurid way. There is nothing Hunter held back on in bodily descriptions and there were definitely parts that made me squirm and want to stop reading.
Was this a book I will recommend to friends as one I loved? No. Is this a book I will be thinking about (happily or not) for a long time to come and will refer to in book discussions? Yes. Perhaps that is the perfect summation of literary fiction as a genre.......
November 28, 2017
I'm gobsmacked this novel isn't being heralded more. Lindsay Hunter's prose is gorgeous and brilliant, and there's incredible skill shown throughout this tight, moving read.
Yes, Greg is frustratingly passive and, yes, he fails over and over again and, yes, his world is often brutal, but he's a beast in how hard he's at last willing to look at the truth and to own it.
So much of the pain here resonated and the ending was honest and elegant. Hunter is the perfect name for this fierce wordsmith.
Yes, Greg is frustratingly passive and, yes, he fails over and over again and, yes, his world is often brutal, but he's a beast in how hard he's at last willing to look at the truth and to own it.
So much of the pain here resonated and the ending was honest and elegant. Hunter is the perfect name for this fierce wordsmith.
August 13, 2017
Smart + creative writing, loved that.
I enjoyed the way Hunter was able to manipulate + layer all her character's individual personal dysfunction. Each character was very real and unique in their own distorted way. So much so, I was silently cheering GJ on to stay missing.. sounds terrible I know!!
A clever use of the title too as I figured out later in the book. 👍🏻👍🏻
I enjoyed the way Hunter was able to manipulate + layer all her character's individual personal dysfunction. Each character was very real and unique in their own distorted way. So much so, I was silently cheering GJ on to stay missing.. sounds terrible I know!!
A clever use of the title too as I figured out later in the book. 👍🏻👍🏻
August 10, 2017
Updated: Here's my review for LARB: https://lareviewofbooks.org/?p=245337...
FUCK. YES. to every line of this perfect novel.
FUCK. YES. to every line of this perfect novel.
May 8, 2019
Something is amiss. I know this novel has lots of champions, but I just didn't find Eat Only When You're Hungry as enthralling and revelatory as other readers did. Lindsay Hunter aims to pull readers into a story weighted in pathos. Greg, the main character, is a man who physically embodies sorrow and regret, manifest in his corpulence. He is a very fat man with very real addictions, like his son GJ, the drug and alcohol addicted ghost of the book. Like father, like son is a trite cliche though a totally accurate description of this codependent father-son relationship.
I admire Hunter's goals. She clearly has a large and devoted readership, among them some of the most noteworthy writers of the day. Yet I feel people are giving this book far too much praise. The plot feels uninspired and the characters, as others have noted, are never fully realized. This book feels fraudulent to me, as if it was written by someone who really doesn't know what's like to be a man, an addict, obese, or just south of sixty years old. Though the POV in this novel is a close third, it still feels distant and observational, like someone attempting to write an ethnography of addiction and masculine decline. These are urgent topics for the era in which we live (read: Trump voters), but Hunter, in my estimation, simply isn't up for the task of deconstructing these topics.
Also, Hunter's writing stumbles. I find her sentences neither clean nor fresh. Finally, her use of metaphor and word choice (cheersing?) makes for an enervating, awkward reading experience. Referring to Greg's son as GJ was perhaps the most nettlesome aspect of the novel for me. There's a reason Americans seldom hear people referred to as GJ: it feels metallic on the tongue and has a similar sound to the ear. Maybe that was Hunter's intention. I don't know. What I do know is that the hype about "Eat Only When You're Hungry" is not to be believed. Honestly, the best aspect of the book is it's great cover art.
I admire Hunter's goals. She clearly has a large and devoted readership, among them some of the most noteworthy writers of the day. Yet I feel people are giving this book far too much praise. The plot feels uninspired and the characters, as others have noted, are never fully realized. This book feels fraudulent to me, as if it was written by someone who really doesn't know what's like to be a man, an addict, obese, or just south of sixty years old. Though the POV in this novel is a close third, it still feels distant and observational, like someone attempting to write an ethnography of addiction and masculine decline. These are urgent topics for the era in which we live (read: Trump voters), but Hunter, in my estimation, simply isn't up for the task of deconstructing these topics.
Also, Hunter's writing stumbles. I find her sentences neither clean nor fresh. Finally, her use of metaphor and word choice (cheersing?) makes for an enervating, awkward reading experience. Referring to Greg's son as GJ was perhaps the most nettlesome aspect of the novel for me. There's a reason Americans seldom hear people referred to as GJ: it feels metallic on the tongue and has a similar sound to the ear. Maybe that was Hunter's intention. I don't know. What I do know is that the hype about "Eat Only When You're Hungry" is not to be believed. Honestly, the best aspect of the book is it's great cover art.
February 4, 2017
Probably my fave Lindsay Hunter yet! I kept avoiding work and my own writing in order to power through this in the last few days, wanting to basically always be reading it.
November 28, 2017
I really enjoyed this touching and often funny story of an aging father on the road to find his addict son that has gone missing.
September 17, 2017
Lindsay Hunter is one of my favorite contemporary writers and this book adds a new layer to her already impressive list of accomplishments. Driven by the storyline of a disconnected dad feebly looking for his grown, possibly drug-addicted (or dead) son, the third person narration places you directly in the tense and heartbreaking emotional center. If you're a parent of a teenager or grown son or daughter, you'll surely find yourself relating to this, even if addiction hasn't been an issue in your parenting. Some of the scenes depicting the disappointment between father and son are crushing, as are the scenes of father and wife (and ex-wife). This is some real life shit and Hunter writes as vividly as ever.
August 2, 2022
I hated this book. BOTM fail.
September 10, 2017
By turns funny and tender, I really enjoyed this story of a father on the trail of his missing addict son. I listened to the audio narrated by David LeDoux, and I felt he was the perfect voice for Greg.
March 3, 2017
This book rocked me in a quiet way. I've always loved Lindsay Hunter's writing intrepidness, trailblazing and her ability to just fucking go there, but this book is more of a masterful implosion. It's methodical and sad and so funny, and it feels haunted by the ghosts of lesser books that it killed in its path. The main character Greg is such a pathetic joy to hang with—the epitome of being sad in America. I've loved all of Hunter's books, but this one is something else. She's only getting better.
March 8, 2021
Eat Only When You’re Hungry is a story about dysfunctional people and their place in the world. Its protagonist is Greg, who at the beginning of the book is setting off to look for his son, Greg Junior (aka GJ), who’s had lifelong addiction problems and many stints in rehab, and now seems to be missing. This search turns into a kind of oddball road trip. Along the way Greg contemplates his past and current relationships, failures as a father, and self-image: he is fat, he hates himself for it, and the longer we spend with him, the more it becomes clear he has a poisonously bad relationship with food (and probably an eating disorder).
Six years ago I read Hunter’s two short story collections – Don’t Kiss Me and Daddy’s – in quick succession, and loved both; I still recommend them all the time. I didn’t get on quite as well with her first novel, Ugly Girls, and the same goes for this. I think it’s perhaps because, in a novel, the pace is (necessarily) slowed right down. For a story about a man searching for his missing son, Eat Only When You’re Hungry has little urgency to it, and the frantic urgency Hunter is capable of creating is one of the main reasons I fell in love with her writing. It’s not at all bad: I enjoy reading about people with ordinary lives who fuck things up; I don’t necessarily find it depressing, and while Greg and those around him have their issues, I found them more believably human than they were unsympathetic. But whatever I wanted from it (maybe something more colourful, more extreme in its most dramatic moments?) I didn’t quite get.
TinyLetter | Linktree
Six years ago I read Hunter’s two short story collections – Don’t Kiss Me and Daddy’s – in quick succession, and loved both; I still recommend them all the time. I didn’t get on quite as well with her first novel, Ugly Girls, and the same goes for this. I think it’s perhaps because, in a novel, the pace is (necessarily) slowed right down. For a story about a man searching for his missing son, Eat Only When You’re Hungry has little urgency to it, and the frantic urgency Hunter is capable of creating is one of the main reasons I fell in love with her writing. It’s not at all bad: I enjoy reading about people with ordinary lives who fuck things up; I don’t necessarily find it depressing, and while Greg and those around him have their issues, I found them more believably human than they were unsympathetic. But whatever I wanted from it (maybe something more colourful, more extreme in its most dramatic moments?) I didn’t quite get.
TinyLetter | Linktree
September 15, 2018
Beautiful and poignant.
August 20, 2017
I have a love/hate relationship with this novel.
I love the writing. It is full of simlies and metaphors that make me admire the skill of Lindsay Hunter. She is undeniably talented.
The characters were well thought out and flawed. They had difficult and realistic problems and processed them in familiar and realistic ways, but this is also my problem. I rooted for Greg, and GJ-- I hoped for them, but at the end of the novel I felt sad and disappointed. I didn't feel a lot of hope and I didn't think things would get better. The novel was pretty short, but I didn't want to move forward and I didn't want to learn more about the characters because the more I read, the more I learned about their sad life and the consequences of that life. Reading felt like a chore. Like I said before, Lindsay is undeniably talented, however, this story didn't offer me the escapism or closure I prefer in my reading. I know that many people enjoy the realism, but that isn't for me.
I love the writing. It is full of simlies and metaphors that make me admire the skill of Lindsay Hunter. She is undeniably talented.
The characters were well thought out and flawed. They had difficult and realistic problems and processed them in familiar and realistic ways, but this is also my problem. I rooted for Greg, and GJ-- I hoped for them, but at the end of the novel I felt sad and disappointed. I didn't feel a lot of hope and I didn't think things would get better. The novel was pretty short, but I didn't want to move forward and I didn't want to learn more about the characters because the more I read, the more I learned about their sad life and the consequences of that life. Reading felt like a chore. Like I said before, Lindsay is undeniably talented, however, this story didn't offer me the escapism or closure I prefer in my reading. I know that many people enjoy the realism, but that isn't for me.
February 12, 2020
I was really excited to begin reading this book. I chose it for my Book of the Month Club choice due to reviews claiming that it tackled the topics of food, alcohol, and drug addiction. However, after finishing the book I really felt like it was a waste of time. The characters didn't seem fully developed and at the end I kind of didn't see the point of the story.
August 8, 2017
I love this book, for Lindsay's acerbic prose strung like barbed wire around its beating heart. It would make a great tattoo, come to think of it.
July 21, 2017
My word, this book. It'll surely end up one of my favorite reads of this year. So so good.
October 11, 2017
Beautiful writing and I get what the author was trying to convey-except the execution of it all just fell short for me.
December 17, 2017
Lindsay Hunter is such an interesting writer. I didn’t love this book quite as much as Ugly Girls, but still, it’s an easy four stars for the way she keeps us engaged with unappealing characters and for her compassionate portrayal of a late-middle-age schlub whose bad luck and bad choices are reaching their logical conclusions.
June 2, 2020
This book was such a disappointment.
Greg, an overweight retired accountant, goes on a journey to find his drug addicted son who's been missing for three weeks.
Honestly, Greg is a really fat guy who can't stop eating and doesn't really care what it is doing to himself. He's divorced to his son's mother, and his current marriage isn't all that great either. He finally decides to get his butt off the couch and look for his son, but in reality he only goes to three places.
This book just was not what I was hoping it would be. It made me quite sad actually. There was no plot, there was no journey, the main character barely changed. This could have been an excellent platform for facing and overcoming addiction, but alas it did not. I'm really thankful it was only 209 pages and I didn't waste a ton of time on it.
Greg, an overweight retired accountant, goes on a journey to find his drug addicted son who's been missing for three weeks.
Honestly, Greg is a really fat guy who can't stop eating and doesn't really care what it is doing to himself. He's divorced to his son's mother, and his current marriage isn't all that great either. He finally decides to get his butt off the couch and look for his son, but in reality he only goes to three places.
This book just was not what I was hoping it would be. It made me quite sad actually. There was no plot, there was no journey, the main character barely changed. This could have been an excellent platform for facing and overcoming addiction, but alas it did not. I'm really thankful it was only 209 pages and I didn't waste a ton of time on it.
August 31, 2017
Why was this story written? Seriously...I do not get it. There really was not anything about the story that needed to be told. I'm all for a "slice of life" type narrative - I do not need a plot to be engaged - but upon completing this book I just felt like "meh, who cares".
All of the characters annoyed me. It was very apparent that the author was trying to be gritty and edgy, however her characters and storyline were not gritty nor edgy enough for me to find it interesting. Nothing redeemable here.
All of the characters annoyed me. It was very apparent that the author was trying to be gritty and edgy, however her characters and storyline were not gritty nor edgy enough for me to find it interesting. Nothing redeemable here.
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