A young, mixed-race vampire must find a way to balance her deep-seated desire to live amongst humans with her incessant hunger in this stunning debut novel from a writer-to-watch.
Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can't eat any of these things. Her body doesn't work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs' blood in London - where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time - is much more difficult than she'd anticipated. …
A young, mixed-race vampire must find a way to balance her deep-seated desire to live amongst humans with her incessant hunger in this stunning debut novel from a writer-to-watch.
Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can't eat any of these things. Her body doesn't work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs' blood in London - where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time - is much more difficult than she'd anticipated.
Then there are the humans - the other artists at the studio space, the people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men that follow her after dark, and Ben, a boyish, goofy-grinned artist she is developing feelings for. Lydia knows that they are her natural prey, but she can't bring herself to feed on them. In her windowless studio, where she paints and studies the work of other artists, binge-watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer and videos of people eating food on YouTube and Instagram, Lydia considers her place in the world. She has many of the things humans wish for - perpetual youth, near-invulnerability, immortality – but she is miserable; she is lonely; and she is hungry - always hungry.
As Lydia develops as a woman and an artist, she will learn that she must reconcile the conflicts within her - between her demon and human sides, her mixed ethnic heritage, and her relationship with food, and, in turn, humans - if she is to find a way to exist in the world. Before any of this, however, she must eat.
Fascinating meditation on predator vs scavenger vs consumer in terms not only of sexual relationships, but family and, most thoroughly, the relationships that occur in the art world. Artist to gallerist to collector to other artists. How everyone is feeding off of everyone else, and the way they ignore the other possibilities of life where that consumption of the work of others is less pronounced. It’s particularly interesting coming from the perspective of a new adult vampire, who is only starting to understand her own power and the choices available to her in how to use it.
Woman, Eating is a boring book. It is very slowly paced, taking extra care to detail introspective thoughts and aspects of the setting beat for beat. For being over 200 pages, the story could be summarized in a few short paragraphs. But it was this care paired, with the interesting main character, that greatly enhanced the story.
This is a book about vampires, but it isn't really. It's about a girl wrestling with her identity as an artist, an individual, and as something that cannot be understood by anyone else. In that way, it is a very human story. We see a familiar, and perhaps nostalgic, story of a girl stumbling her way into independence after leaving her only family behind, and quickly realizing that she was not provided all of the information and resources to thrive.
There are a …
"Do you think God would feed a body like yours?"
Woman, Eating is a boring book. It is very slowly paced, taking extra care to detail introspective thoughts and aspects of the setting beat for beat. For being over 200 pages, the story could be summarized in a few short paragraphs. But it was this care paired, with the interesting main character, that greatly enhanced the story.
This is a book about vampires, but it isn't really. It's about a girl wrestling with her identity as an artist, an individual, and as something that cannot be understood by anyone else. In that way, it is a very human story. We see a familiar, and perhaps nostalgic, story of a girl stumbling her way into independence after leaving her only family behind, and quickly realizing that she was not provided all of the information and resources to thrive.
There are a lot of heavy topics touched on in this short novel: race, 'original sin', eating disorders, lost heritage, inadequacy, and the artist to name a few. Kohda manages to explore these thoroughly enough for them to feel sufficiently examined without making the book too preachy. Again, the pacing was slow, but given that this was a deep, introspective examination, it was to the book's benefit. Characters were underwhelming and indistinct, but there were so few characters that were important, it didn't feel like a huge loss. I hated the (sparse) dialogue though.
My one primary criticism was that the romance felt underdeveloped and awkward without satisfying payoff. Otherwise, this was a deeply interesting novel that was way more complex than I thought it would be. To be frank, I don't know that I'd recommend this too liberally. I don't see this being an enjoyable read for most people. But it really worked for me. I'm curious to see what works Kohda comes out with in the future.
Unbearable dialogue, vapid inner monologue, all the angst of the gen z/millennial with none of the quality writing that might compel me to give a shit.
Unbearable dialogue, vapid inner monologue, all the angst of the gen z/millennial with none of the quality writing that might compel me to give a shit.
