Reviews with content warning for Death - Woman, Eating

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda

48 reviews

sarahjxde's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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olivia_piepmeier's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

My experience of this was so interesting. It was a review copy, if that makes any difference in the reading. I don't think I would have picked it up if I didn't get it in a blind-date-with-a-book thing but when I started it, I felt immediately drawn to it. I can't really pinpoint why it hooked me so. It just felt like a mood. Often, vampire novels focus on the backstory of how they came to be in that world but this just focuses entirely on Lyd's experience over a few days. There are some flashbacks, but if you think about how you think over the course of a few days, yeah there are some flashbacks! It felt very millennial, reflective, modern, and sort of weird. I liked the connection the art world, perhaps this is something that drew me in.

Honestly it almost deserves the category of "eating disorder" book. The sexual assault was not as bad as it could have been, but still very eerie. They delved into some more last minute as the book ended, which I felt was unnecessary.

Overall, I'd recommend it as a weird contemporary London art world millennial vampire escape.

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readerette's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I deeply enjoyed the first half of the book, and then it just started to get unfocused, with these long interludes of thinking about food.

I appreciated the exploration of the minutiae of human life with this vampire in the role of "average young woman" (meaning she could never be average, and yet would always look it to the casual observer). It is delightfully tongue in cheek that Lyd is a starving artist. I enjoyed a fresh take on vampires as well.

However, at some point her obsession with food stopped being an interesting examination of the human (or female) relationship to food, and just a sign of her lack of responsibility and creativity. Given that food was the major focus of the main character's life, the fact that her thoughts about it ended up so repetitive and unproductive just created a sense of plodding.

The painting was far too obvious an allegory for her self-perception.

I'm also still trying to decipher the last few scenes, not because they were intellectually challenging, but because I want them to mean something and I'm not sure they mean much of anything.

It's a decent book, just not the literary treat I was hoping for.

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