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Winter Hunger
Fleeing Toronto with his obsessively loved wife Diana and their infant son Cam, Alan Hooper ventures out to a Chipewayan Reserve in North Manitoba, to study the kinship and food-gathering patterns of three native communities. There he discovers a savage landscape which abhors a human presence.
- GenresHorror
165 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 23, 2025
This is only 165 pages but it is next level fucked up and plays with your head!
The sense of isolation, seclusion and loneliness that Ann Tracy portrays here is magnificent. I got a real sense of Northern remoteness. The story creeps up on you slowly, like a stalking mountain lion. You're aware of things being "not quite right" but you can't quite put your finger on it.
The writing, in its expertise, produces feelings of repulsion and disgust with some actual moments of what the fuck! The characters feel broken and spun out, with feelings of tension, apprehension and restlessness perfectly illustrated.
A brilliant book that manages to serve up a helping of creeping horror in such a short story.
The sense of isolation, seclusion and loneliness that Ann Tracy portrays here is magnificent. I got a real sense of Northern remoteness. The story creeps up on you slowly, like a stalking mountain lion. You're aware of things being "not quite right" but you can't quite put your finger on it.
The writing, in its expertise, produces feelings of repulsion and disgust with some actual moments of what the fuck! The characters feel broken and spun out, with feelings of tension, apprehension and restlessness perfectly illustrated.
A brilliant book that manages to serve up a helping of creeping horror in such a short story.
September 24, 2022
Possibly not a book to share with people in couples’ therapy. Especially in winter.
April 21, 2018
Some books don’t let you forget them. They nag at you, shadow you, whisper questions that eventually require you to read a second time in order to find answers.
The question that sent me back to the pages of Ann Tracy’s Winter Hunger is “How does she do it?” By “it” I mean how does she create a protagonist, in this case the doctoral candidate Alan, who is irritating and clueless, just doesn’t get it (until the end), who nonetheless keeps me as a reader engaged in his story? Tracy’s skill at telling this tale of slow horror, woven from intersecting threads of psychology, gender, culture, and extreme winter weather, has to do with maintaining a wry narrative voice that does not separate itself from Alan’s point of view, so that even as he is self-involved, fixated possessively on his wife Diana, jealous of his infant son Cam, disgusted by Proxene Ratfat (a fixture in the lives especially of the women of the village) and appalled by her art, he is also captivating and even sometimes humorous.
As he descends into a mental health crisis, struggles to come to grips with it and emerge from it, Tracy makes him just insightful enough, just pathetic enough, just honorable enough to cause the reader to wish him the best.
Behind it all stands Diana, the wife with whom Alan is obsessed, and the character who is, in a very real way, though she rarely speaks and we haver have direct access to her inner world, the true protagonist. While Alan is reading about belief being real in the books he consults, Diana is living it.
To say more would be to give away what happens, so I’ll leave it at that.
***A word about stars***
I can't tell you how much I dislike stars. Like the grades I hated to give when I taught creative writing, they seem to mean something, but what that something is differs in each instance from all others. Why is one book a four for me instead of a five? It could be anything from a few too many uncaught typos, an anachronism or two, or an ineffective tense shift to a bit of redundancy or a "fact" of the fiction that contradicts my own sense of "fact." It could be I am reading in and responding to a genre that is not among my preferred ones.
What is a five for me? Likely anything by Toni Morrison, Jose Saramago, Louise Erdrich, Marilynne Robinson, Sherman Alexie. A book not only well written but precisely (invisibly) edited. A book I keep thinking about, because I can't stop thinking about it.
Either four or five stars means I found a book well worth my time and think you might, too.
The question that sent me back to the pages of Ann Tracy’s Winter Hunger is “How does she do it?” By “it” I mean how does she create a protagonist, in this case the doctoral candidate Alan, who is irritating and clueless, just doesn’t get it (until the end), who nonetheless keeps me as a reader engaged in his story? Tracy’s skill at telling this tale of slow horror, woven from intersecting threads of psychology, gender, culture, and extreme winter weather, has to do with maintaining a wry narrative voice that does not separate itself from Alan’s point of view, so that even as he is self-involved, fixated possessively on his wife Diana, jealous of his infant son Cam, disgusted by Proxene Ratfat (a fixture in the lives especially of the women of the village) and appalled by her art, he is also captivating and even sometimes humorous.
As he descends into a mental health crisis, struggles to come to grips with it and emerge from it, Tracy makes him just insightful enough, just pathetic enough, just honorable enough to cause the reader to wish him the best.
Behind it all stands Diana, the wife with whom Alan is obsessed, and the character who is, in a very real way, though she rarely speaks and we haver have direct access to her inner world, the true protagonist. While Alan is reading about belief being real in the books he consults, Diana is living it.
To say more would be to give away what happens, so I’ll leave it at that.
***A word about stars***
I can't tell you how much I dislike stars. Like the grades I hated to give when I taught creative writing, they seem to mean something, but what that something is differs in each instance from all others. Why is one book a four for me instead of a five? It could be anything from a few too many uncaught typos, an anachronism or two, or an ineffective tense shift to a bit of redundancy or a "fact" of the fiction that contradicts my own sense of "fact." It could be I am reading in and responding to a genre that is not among my preferred ones.
What is a five for me? Likely anything by Toni Morrison, Jose Saramago, Louise Erdrich, Marilynne Robinson, Sherman Alexie. A book not only well written but precisely (invisibly) edited. A book I keep thinking about, because I can't stop thinking about it.
Either four or five stars means I found a book well worth my time and think you might, too.
January 23, 2022
A slow building horror about PhD candidate Alan Hooper, his wife Diana, and their infant son Cam. Alan is in a Chipewayan community in northern Manitoba called Wino Day Lake as part of his dissertation, with his family there with them. Things aren’t great to start with in the book and only get steadily worse as the book progresses. Even at the very beginning, Alan is kind of an irritable, arrogant, unsympathetic, jealous person. Though there to research indigenous culture, privately Alan at best doesn’t feel especially connected to the locals, at worst kind of scoffs at some of their beliefs (though keeps these thoughts to himself and sometimes Diana). He is prickly, not taking being isolated from the world he knew back in Toronto especially well, doesn’t have any friends in the community, and is insanely jealous. He is jealous of Diana developing a good friendship with a local elderly woman named Naomi (when Alan is still very much an outsider) and most of all is jealous of how much attention Diana gives to their infant son Cam. Though the amount of attention given to both Naomi and to Cam seem perfectly reasonable, Alan is absolutely obsessed with having Diana to himself and doesn’t want to share her with anyone else. Also, Alan barely feels anything for Cam at all. At best he kind of tolerates his son, though he puts on a show for Diana to make her happy. Whether or not Diana is fooled, it is hard to say, as the book is only from Alan’s point of view. I will say in a book about the Windigo, it isn’t a really good sign that Alan doesn’t feel especially attached to his son.
Things are adequate I suppose, with Alan pretending to work on his dissertation (mostly finding excuses not to work on it) and Diana actually developing something of a life in Wino Day Lake, when early on in the book Naomi suffers form some sort of psychosis, becoming listless, not talking, not eating, and viewed by her family as becoming a Windigo. Diana is devastated and begs Alan to help. Alan, aside from obviously not really wanting to, honestly doesn’t know what he can do and Naomi dies (apparently from efforts by her family to keep her from becoming a Windigo, though she isn’t outright murdered).
After that, things get bad for the Hoopers, with Alan and Diana becoming estranged, Alan feeling if possible even less for Cam than before, and then Alan having dreams of wanting to get even closer to Diana (despite Diana being distant and standoffish), that hugging and cuddling and sex just isn’t close enough. He wants to be really close, closer than that. He wants to absorb her, consume her completely.
Positives, I liked the slowly building horror, of how the detached anthropological viewpoint of Alan both caused him to overanalyze some things but also made him feel perhaps he was a bit more removed from things than he actually was (reminding me of the 2019 film, _Midsommar_, that the professionals with their clinical detachment forgot that they were very much immersed in something that mentally to them they weren’t actually a part of). I see some reviews say that there is something of an obvious conclusion, though I would say there is a misdirect too, though I grant towards the end I did see where the story was going. Spoiler perhaps, this isn’t supernatural horror but very much is psychological horror and to me a successful one.
Negatives, there is an odd interlude later in the book that other reviews have noted. It derailed a lot of the building tension which till then was quite good (in fact was a deliberate effort on Alan’s part to diffuse this building tension). The book would have been better if the interlude was shorter or maybe even absent, though it wasn’t completely unsuccessful. Not getting Diana’s point of view was a complicated thing, though it make sense given how selfish, stuck-in-his-own-thoughts, and narcissistic Alan was to not have Diana even have much dialogue. Diana largely existed in the book as Alan’s views on her, what she meant to him.
I liked it; I understand this is a first novel? Very good for a first novel. It is short read. If I had been more of a dedicated reader I could have probably read it in a day.
Things are adequate I suppose, with Alan pretending to work on his dissertation (mostly finding excuses not to work on it) and Diana actually developing something of a life in Wino Day Lake, when early on in the book Naomi suffers form some sort of psychosis, becoming listless, not talking, not eating, and viewed by her family as becoming a Windigo. Diana is devastated and begs Alan to help. Alan, aside from obviously not really wanting to, honestly doesn’t know what he can do and Naomi dies (apparently from efforts by her family to keep her from becoming a Windigo, though she isn’t outright murdered).
After that, things get bad for the Hoopers, with Alan and Diana becoming estranged, Alan feeling if possible even less for Cam than before, and then Alan having dreams of wanting to get even closer to Diana (despite Diana being distant and standoffish), that hugging and cuddling and sex just isn’t close enough. He wants to be really close, closer than that. He wants to absorb her, consume her completely.
Positives, I liked the slowly building horror, of how the detached anthropological viewpoint of Alan both caused him to overanalyze some things but also made him feel perhaps he was a bit more removed from things than he actually was (reminding me of the 2019 film, _Midsommar_, that the professionals with their clinical detachment forgot that they were very much immersed in something that mentally to them they weren’t actually a part of). I see some reviews say that there is something of an obvious conclusion, though I would say there is a misdirect too, though I grant towards the end I did see where the story was going. Spoiler perhaps, this isn’t supernatural horror but very much is psychological horror and to me a successful one.
Negatives, there is an odd interlude later in the book that other reviews have noted. It derailed a lot of the building tension which till then was quite good (in fact was a deliberate effort on Alan’s part to diffuse this building tension). The book would have been better if the interlude was shorter or maybe even absent, though it wasn’t completely unsuccessful. Not getting Diana’s point of view was a complicated thing, though it make sense given how selfish, stuck-in-his-own-thoughts, and narcissistic Alan was to not have Diana even have much dialogue. Diana largely existed in the book as Alan’s views on her, what she meant to him.
I liked it; I understand this is a first novel? Very good for a first novel. It is short read. If I had been more of a dedicated reader I could have probably read it in a day.
March 6, 2014
I came across this interesting book in an account of Food and the Gothic, as an example of contemporary treatment of the ultimate food taboo. Although at first fearful of it being too gruesome for my taste, this Canadian novella is actually quite light-hearted. Alan, a comically solipsistic anthropologist is trying to write a dissertation on food customs in a snowbound trailer in the remote north. With him is his long suffering but delectable wife Diana and chubby baby Cam. On the tortures of writing a dissertation alone, it scored highly with me. But then the local American Indian community start to talk about the return of the 'windigo' or cannibal spirit, and Alan's anththropological empathy runs out as he starts to experience strange desires.
Taken in the context of modern Gothic writing, this is a very fine fable seasoned with some extraordinary writing about extreme appetites. Ann Tracy is a writer I'll be trying to find out more about.
Taken in the context of modern Gothic writing, this is a very fine fable seasoned with some extraordinary writing about extreme appetites. Ann Tracy is a writer I'll be trying to find out more about.
June 19, 2008
An anthropologist, his wife and baby stuck in a village by the Arctic Circle for the winter...no fresh produce...hmmm...that baby's startin' to look tasty!
March 16, 2008
Ann Tracy is wonderful! What a pleasure to know her as a friend, and then to read her work and feel her earthy spirit effusing from the pages.
February 3, 2012
Brilliant, macabre and darkly funny. Not for the squeamish!
October 13, 2015
Really good, short, original (psychological) horror novel.
February 3, 2019
Amazing read with an unpredictable ending
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 1, 2024
I intended this to be my final read of 2023, but didn't quite get there, so it's become my first completed book of 2024 🥳
Set mainly in a snowbound Manitoba village, visiting anthropologist Alan Hopper is an unprepossessing manchild, completely self-absorbed, objectifyingly obsessed with his wife, and perpetually jealous of the attention she gives to their toddler son. He begrudges his wife's friendships within the local community, and has a supercilious, condescending attitude towards the people he's come to study for his PhD dissertation. Ironically, he gets caught in a psychosexual obsession involving the folklore of the Windigo, the cannibalistic spirit of loneliness, freezing cold, famine and starvation. Given these themes, the horror and suspense is less whether somebody will be eaten, than whose body it will be. 😋🍖🤢
Set mainly in a snowbound Manitoba village, visiting anthropologist Alan Hopper is an unprepossessing manchild, completely self-absorbed, objectifyingly obsessed with his wife, and perpetually jealous of the attention she gives to their toddler son. He begrudges his wife's friendships within the local community, and has a supercilious, condescending attitude towards the people he's come to study for his PhD dissertation. Ironically, he gets caught in a psychosexual obsession involving the folklore of the Windigo, the cannibalistic spirit of loneliness, freezing cold, famine and starvation. Given these themes, the horror and suspense is less whether somebody will be eaten, than whose body it will be. 😋🍖🤢
February 27, 2020
This is decent for a first novel. I had trouble with the pacing and saw the ending coming too far off, but the narrative was engaging and the lines are solid.
May 8, 2016
Why I read this book:
Winter Hunger came to me as a recommend by a coworker. I haven't read anything by Ann Tracy before, but she was born in Bangor and lived in Canada. Plus the back cover caught my interest.
My one sentence summary:
Nothing is more isolating than winter in northern Manitoba, except for the hunger for human flesh.
Kudos:
I was really drawn to the premise of this story. Anthropologist PhD candidate takes his wife and infant son to a remote native community to finish his thesis. Having done my own time writing a thesis, I found Alan's struggle with completing a work of such importance to his career and possibly no one else a realistic conflict. Having a child around the same age, I could also sympathize with the demands such a small being places on a marriage. Now throw in a windigo threat and I'm hooked. I loved the sense of isolation and growing madness Alan encounters as he fights to come to terms with how the natives deal with a potential windigo problem and his own growing obsession over the myth. The ending backs a great punch that I didn't see coming.
Quibbles:
Shortly after the middle of the book, Alan departs the wonderfully isolated Wino Day Lake for the big city of Toronto. I found his whole experience there, while mildly entertaining, a break from the real location of the story and meandering. Alan isn't a likable character, but that feels more by design. I certainly gnashed my teeth at some of his clueless husband reactions to his wife's devotion to their son.
Final verdict:
Winter Hunger is an interesting read even if it feels to jump the tracks when it hits Toronto. It was published in 1990 and the pacing feels dated and the narrative a little self-absorbed. But I'm glad to have experienced the chill of a Manitoba winter which comes through in spades.
Winter Hunger came to me as a recommend by a coworker. I haven't read anything by Ann Tracy before, but she was born in Bangor and lived in Canada. Plus the back cover caught my interest.
My one sentence summary:
Nothing is more isolating than winter in northern Manitoba, except for the hunger for human flesh.
Kudos:
I was really drawn to the premise of this story. Anthropologist PhD candidate takes his wife and infant son to a remote native community to finish his thesis. Having done my own time writing a thesis, I found Alan's struggle with completing a work of such importance to his career and possibly no one else a realistic conflict. Having a child around the same age, I could also sympathize with the demands such a small being places on a marriage. Now throw in a windigo threat and I'm hooked. I loved the sense of isolation and growing madness Alan encounters as he fights to come to terms with how the natives deal with a potential windigo problem and his own growing obsession over the myth. The ending backs a great punch that I didn't see coming.
Quibbles:
Shortly after the middle of the book, Alan departs the wonderfully isolated Wino Day Lake for the big city of Toronto. I found his whole experience there, while mildly entertaining, a break from the real location of the story and meandering. Alan isn't a likable character, but that feels more by design. I certainly gnashed my teeth at some of his clueless husband reactions to his wife's devotion to their son.
Final verdict:
Winter Hunger is an interesting read even if it feels to jump the tracks when it hits Toronto. It was published in 1990 and the pacing feels dated and the narrative a little self-absorbed. But I'm glad to have experienced the chill of a Manitoba winter which comes through in spades.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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July 25, 2020fuuuuuck (i made an account on here just to write this review and i meant every word of it)
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