LOVE, LET ME NOT HUNGER
Paul Gallicos haunting novel, LOVE, LET ME NOT HUNGER, is the saga of a little British traveling circus stranded in Spain. Deserted by the owner and the main body of performers, their livelihood reduced to ashes, their resources exhausted, strangers marooned in the heart of a savage, poverty-stricken land, five ill-assorted human beings embark upon the struggle to keep their remaining animals, themselves, and their hopes alive. The need is for food, but the hunger is for love.
There is Toby, the young rider striving to escape from his prudish family into sexual manhood; Janos, the Hungarian dwarf clown who lives only for his stomach and his dogs; Fred Deeter who once punched cattle down through Wyoming and Texas and now presents cowboy and animal acts; Mr. Albert, the old beastman who after a life of pervading failure has found an aim in the love of animals and a profession in caring for themand Rose.
Rose who? Rose nothing! Rose nobody! Rose the outsider, picked up off the streets by Jackdaw Williams, august and professional funny man, and forced upon the strait-laced circus artists as his mistress and caravan companion.
Their fate becomes entangled with the grotesque and horrifying Marquesa de Pozzoblanco, who battens upon human misery and degradation, obese monster who might have stepped down from the most macabre canvas of a Goya. Yet, without her, none might have survived. Not Rose, with her well-nigh hopeless love for Toby, nor Judy, the great elephant who tried to kill her, or the big, graceful, helpless cats.
Through this passionate and thoughtful novel runs the theme of the humility, humanity and simplicity of old Mr. Albert in his rusty frock coat and bowler hat, who inadvertently becomes a comic butt through the forces of his own kindliness and pity, drawing upon himself and his last shreds of dignity the greedy and fatal gaze of the Marquesa.