REVIEW: Woman, Eating
Lyd is struggling with the very human problem of being 23 years old and trying trying trying to be a good person. She thinks at her core she might be capable of good, despite her centuries-old vampire mother calling herself and her own daughter both demons. In Claire Kohda’s atmospheric, funny, tragically relatable novel, Woman, Eating, our main character, Lyd, oscillates between the definable parts of herself, stretching her thin. Her mixed-race heritage of Japanese and Malaysian; her craving for love and her denial of her own pleasure; her obsession with watching YouTube #WhatIEatInADay videos and her passion for starvation; wanting to be good but viewing herself as morally, unequivocally bad; these all pull her apart.
Lyd grew up drinking pig’s blood from an illegal butcher to, if not satisfy, at least mollify the cravings for human blood. In her mother’s mind, pigs are unclean and therefore the only acceptable blood source for the demonic vampires they are. The generational trauma her mother puts her through is summed up succinctly when Lyd thinks, “I wonder if I’ve been useful to her only as something she can pour everything she despises about herself into, something that she could raise to hate itself so that she’d have company in her feelings.” Lyd doesn’t have the opportunity to have company in those searing moments of self-flagellation; her mother forbids her from having friends and repeatedly tells her she will never find love.
As her mother declines and is eventually put into a nursing home, Lyd steps out on her own for the first time. Having to find blood on her own proves to be more difficult and her cravings increase, heightened by her growing sexuality and close proximity to others. The only time Lyd forgets her hunger, the only time she feels really alive, is when she begins a sexual relationship with a human. Replacing food with sex feeds her in a different way, maybe her soul, if she believed vampires had those.
Vampire stories are often ones of repression, self-hatred, and, in the books about “good” vampires, eschewing pleasure. (In the iconic Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer, the vampires who deny themselves human blood identify as vegetarians.) Woman, Eating explores hunger and satiation in a way that is not unique to vampires. Women throughout history have struggled with the tug-of-war between pleasure and pain, between hunger and fullness. Kohda’s novel is less about vampirism and more about a young woman learning to satisfy herself and to trust her own hunger.
At the end of the day, the moral ambiguity of consumption is relatable despite the main character’s vampirism. I’ve often wondered the same as Lyd: “I’m not really sure what I am anymore, though—whether I’m a monster or whether I’m just a woman, or both.”
RATING: ☆☆☆☆