Catherine Chidgey’s new novel was inspired by a magnificent piece of archival flotsam: a 1930s newspaper report of a bizarre pay dispute. A young woman had “undertaken to fast for 40 days and 40 nights in a lion’s den” as an attraction in Blackpool – a prowling spectacle of hunger artistry – but abandoned the feat partway. Her employer claimed she had broken the contract; the woman claimed the lion was at fault – it had been set loose. It’s a little hard to skip dinner when you might become one. What writerly catnip: the lion, the kitsch and the wage-probe.
The Starving Bride restages this big-cat sideshow act in a near-future where old-timey attractions are being revived in the hope of reviving something else: “A sense of nostalgia, that was the thing. A sense of innocence. Even if the stags and hens still vomited in the gutters.” It’s bread-and-circus misdirection: the sea is rising; the buildings are crumbling; the city is beset by poverty; and the bureaucrats are masters of denial and delay. But at night, on the boardwalk, the lights are shining and the past is alive again – England in its imagined prime (the tourist board hashtag: #Asimplertime).
