"American Savage" is about cannibalism, which is quite a macabre subject, hence it may not be to everyone's tastes (literacy tastes, not food). However the author does point out that he wasn't trying to write "a novel driven by horror and gore," rather one about about our relationship with food, e.g. "as a culinary concept, cannibalism was not something Titus expected to break into the mainstream any time soon."
The book follows the Savage family in America. It is the follow-up to "The Savages" which you don't need to have read to get into this one. Also if you have read the original I don't know if by this book the joke is wearing a bit thin.
The book starts slowly. The family are introduced: Titus the father, Angelica the mother, Ivan the 15-year-old son, Katya the 5-year-old daughter, a little nipper in more ways than one, and the vegan lodger Amanda, who makes an exception to her vegan-ism for human meat. 103-year-old granddad Oleg lives just down the road too in a OAP home. They have a family "feast" at the beginning before their separate lives are told episodically throughout until there is a coming together of story-lines at the end. The main strand sees Titus, as head of the family, trying to source the main ingredient for the next feast, and the pressure everyone else is putting on him to do just that. However Titus has scruples and will only take someone who doesn't deserve to live, e.g. a problem tenant.
Other side-orders, for example, follow the family setting up a vegan restaurant whilst getting on the wrong side of a Russian gangster.
Overall then I felt that this book was OK, although it took a while to get going. Given the praise on the back cover "The Savages" is probably the better book.
(I got this book through a Goodreads First Read competition. This review is my honest opinion of the book.)
Publication date: 5 June 2014
Amazon UK link: American Savage
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