The novel ends up heavy on ideas but light on characterization, and as a whole it leaves a bit of a bad taste in the mouth.

To make matters worse, even if he can wrangle his brothers together for a feast, the Can-Am people have assimilated, and the only living Cannibal who knows how to perform the ancient ritual is their Uncle Ishmael, whose erratic understanding of their traditions leads to conflict. I then recommended it to everyone I know but only a couple of people saw the same humour that I did.Everyone else was climbing into their boxes, writing Keep Out on the outside and sealing themselves up inside. But you’re not reading As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, but Mother For Dinner, the new work by the dizzyingly acerbic Shalom Auslander. And anyone who has read Auslander before will know that when I say “applies his satirical scalpel”, I mean something more like “tosses a hand-grenade and runs away laughing”. Little Zero (girl after my own heart) --felt that if somebody read this story 100 years from now and believed a word of it they would be idiots just like all the siblings.

Ważne miejsce w tej opowieści odgrywają rzeczywiste, a nie tylko literackie postaci - aktor Jack Nicholson oraz producent samochodów, Henry Ford.

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. 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. Though well-written and humorous, I feel the ability to enjoy this book is dependent on how much casual bigotry you can stomach before it stops feeling like satire and starts feeling excessive. Confronting his Can-Am heritage comes to the fore when his mother – known as Mudd – has started to eat nothing but Whopper burgers.

I think my hatred towards Mudd should just be seen as a testament to how well written this book is, and how superb the characterisation. I loved the first third of the book, stuck with the middle part to see what would happen and got bored with the final third. 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.He grew up in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Monsey, New York where he describes himself as having been "raised like a veal". Of practical concern, his dead mother is six-foot-two and weighs about four hundred and fifty pounds. Auslander uses his signature dark humor to brilliantly satirize tribalism in America… Graphic situations abound; even the characters are revolted, while, through their often ludicrous stories, Auslander explores the sense of otherness and the value of diversity. The book is very funny and the premise is very clever but the joke is taken so far that it ends up being repeated too many times.

Would recommend for readers who are interested in reading about the constraints of identity, especially cultural/ethnic minorities. Una obra fantásticamente loca que, entre filete y filete, muestra el pesar de las tradiciones y cómo el estilo de crianza marca la vida de cada hija o hijo. Beyond the practical, Seventh struggles with the sense of guilt and responsibility he feels – to his mother, to his people and to his unique cultural heritage. In this book, he pursues another version of the same theme: the intolerable weight of history, of its deadening solemnity, and the individual’s rage to throw it off. I enjoyed it from start to finish, the whole thing was right up my alley; the premise, the characters, the laugh-out-loud humour, the themes.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. l’élément déclencheur qui va remettre beaucoup de choses en question n’est autre que la mort de la matriarche qui doit être mangée par ses propres enfants afin de perpétuer la tradition. Their most sacred rites are proscribed by law (the first rule of Cannibal life, we’re told, is “NO COPS”), the media stereotypes them with comical images of bones through noses and bubbling pots, and their history is one of persecution, marginalisation and pursuit by torch-wielding mobs. 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. 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.