The Seven Deadly Sins Reading List l Gluttony

What exactly are we consuming when we give in to gluttony? Is it merely food, the pleasure of eating beyond necessity, or does the appetite extend to money, bodies, possessions, power and the lives we imagine ourselves entitled to have?

For the fifth entry in our seven deadly sins series, we have gathered five novels in which appetite takes on a life of its own. A small warning to those with delicate stomachs: Some of these literary meals are considerably less appetizing than they first appear. Read on, preferably after lunch.

The Edible Woman | Margaret Atwood

Marian MacAlpin has a respectable job, a sensible fiancé and a life that appears to be proceeding according to plan. Yet, as her engagement to Peter progresses, she begins to lose her appetite. First, certain foods become difficult to swallow; then the very idea of eating meat becomes intolerable. Atwood uses Marian's increasingly peculiar relationship with food to examine the expectations placed upon women in a society that regards them as things to be consumed, shaped and possessed. Her refusal to eat gradually becomes a refusal to participate in the future being prepared for her. It is oddly disturbing to watch Marian lose control over an ordinary bodily function while everyone around her remains concerned with her becoming a suitable wife. Her appetite disappears, but the demands upon her do not.

Butter | Asako Yuzuki

A journalist's investigation into a woman accused of murdering several men through elaborate meals becomes an unsettling examination of appetite, femininity and social resentment. Inspired by a real Japanese criminal case, Yuzuki's novel follows Rika Machida as she attempts to understand Manako Kajii, a woman whose love of cooking, eating and her own body has made her an object of public fascination and condemnation. Food is central to their increasingly intimate exchanges, but so are the expectations governing how women should look, behave and make themselves desirable. The novel's descriptions of food are sumptuous, occasionally excessive, and often accompanied by an uncomfortable awareness of how instant pleasure becomes entangled with power.

Dead Souls | Nikolai Gogol

Gogol's Chichikov travels through provincial Russia purchasing the names of deceased serfs from landowners who have not yet removed them from their official records. His scheme is absurdly ingenious, but the world he encounters is even more grotesque. Plyushkin represents a different kind of consumption: A miser so consumed by his attachment to possessions that he hoards objects long after they have ceased to serve any purpose. Gogol's satire is not confined to eating, although food and feasting frequently expose the characters' vulgarity and excess. His Russia is populated by people who accumulate, bargain, consume and possess without ever attaining satisfaction.

Big Brother | Lionel Shriver

When Pandora Halfdanarson's estranged brother Edison arrives at her home, she is confronted with a man whose extraordinary weight gain has transformed both his appearance and his relationship with the world. A jazz musician with a history of excess, Edison becomes the subject of Pandora's increasingly desperate efforts to help him lose weight. Shriver uses the family's predicament to explore the uneasy territory between affection, responsibility and control. Food becomes a source of conflict, but the novel is equally concerned with the moral assumptions people attach to appetite and the bodies that accommodate it.

The Belly of Paris | Émile Zola

Set around Les Halles, the vast central food market of 19th-century Paris, Zola's novel is practically overflowing with meat, fish, vegetables, cheeses and elaborate displays of produce. Florent, an escaped political prisoner, returns to Paris and finds himself employed at the market, where his increasingly uneasy presence disrupts the comfortable lives of its prosperous inhabitants. Zola makes food an instrument of social observation. The market's abundance belongs to those who can afford it, while hunger and political discontent remain just beyond its well-stocked counters. Beneath its extraordinary descriptions of food lies a rather bitter account of bourgeois complacency, where having enough is treated as a virtue and wanting something different becomes a threat.

Next sin: Envy

Azeema Anhar is an English Language Instructor at ULAB and member of the editorial team at the weekly Counterpoint.