kellydienes 's review for:

Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda

5.0

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just finished this and i’m tipsaaay and dude this book was just a straight up VIBE throughout

the story was eh kinda but honestly the dark moody contemplative vibe was IT and i could read another hundred pages of lydia’s thoughts

love that she’s drawn to the baba yaga puppet so she steals it and gives it a personality and it inspires her and keeps her company. that’s a thing i would do

pretty sure i’ve not read about nor consumed any vampiric media that has described the effects of drinking blood anything like this book. lydia’s mom thinks that, as vampires, she and lydia are shameful demonic creatures who deserve an austere and miserable existence, so she only allows herself and lydia to subsist on pig’s blood, which she considers the basest of animals. when they drink blood, it goes straight into their veins and they experience everything that said creature has experienced in its life. so when lydia drinks the blood of a duck, she feels weightless and has experienced flight and breaking through clouds, etc.

Spoiler

when she tries drinking milk, her veins turn white, and her body spazzes out and rejects it, making her super ill

i thought ben was lame and she can do so much better lol

i loved her fascination with the amrita sher-gil painting, “three girls”, and how as a child she assumed they were vampires, waiting for men to leave a building so they could eat them. i looked up the painting and i love it. those bitches are vampires

Spoiler

i wasn’t sure where the book was going throughout but i’m glad it ended with her killing and eating gideon, a stuck up dipshit who owns some of her father’s paintings and enjoys groping women. pretty sure he’s the first human she kills and drinks the entirety of. when she consumes him she experiences his memories, the best being all the food he’s ever eaten, thankfully japanese food, which she has longed to eat her entire life due to being half japanese, and she also discovers a special appreciation for malaysian food. after initially rejecting her malaysian mother, understandably, considering how she was brought up to hate herself, lydia now feels the urge to retrieve her mother from the assisted living places she’s in, embrace her, and set off somewhere else with her