Lydia is hungry.
She’s always wanted to try sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside – the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea 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 this. 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 people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men who follow her after dark, and Ben, a 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.
If Lydia is to find a way to exist in the world, 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.
Before any of this, however, she must eat.
My Thoughts on Woman, Eating
Woman, Eating, is not your typical vampire novel. Yes, Lydia, the protagonist (a young woman who has recently put her vampire mother, and Sire, in a home because of an unknown illness similar to Dementia), drinks blood, is ageless, and sensitive to sunlight. But there is very little neck-biting, throat-ripping involved.
Instead, what Woman, Eating offers is a ‘coming of age’ story (this isn’t quite the right term but it’s the best I can come up with at the moment) about a young woman trying to figure out her place in a world where doesn’t quite fit and where she doesn’t have the confidence to be her true self. In that sense, Lydia represents so many young women, who are so often told what they should be and how they should act.
The fact that she’s a vampire is almost secondary. The hunger she feels is representative of the hunger we all (most of us?) feel when we start out adult life, to do well, to do more. I thought it was very clever in this regard. That doesn’t mean it was all good though, and I did have some reservations. Mainly that it went a bit too long without anything happening, that scenes were repeated once too often.
Is this the end of the world? No. But did I end up losing interest in the end? Yes. However, I would still say it’s worth a read. And that – for a debut novel – this was an impressive book. I look forward to seeing what Claire Kohda gives us next. 3.5/5 stars
Emma
Please note: I received a copy of this book in return for a fair, honest, review. All thoughts, feelings, and opinions are my own.
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