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bookishcapybara 's review for:
This Vicious Hunger
by Francesca May
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
This Vicious Hunger is a mysterious and enchanting gothic tale with flavors of dark academia and the Secret Garden. After the deaths of her father and new husband, Thora Grieve is sent away by her disdainful mother-in-law. She is sent to university to study botany under the tutelage of an old colleague of her father's, where she finds herself to be the only female scholar. In spite of the ongoing and all-too-familiar theme of misogyny and disregard for female contributions to academia, Thora does befriend a young man called Leo, and is apprenticed to the only female teacher at the university. She also discovers a garden of unfamiliar and poisonous plants locked behind a rusted old gate and tended by a mysterious woman who only appears at night.
This book has great mouth-feel. The university has a visceral atmosphere of heat and oppression; sweltering humidity, terra-cotta and plaster spires, and the green bittersweet smell of rotting plant matter. It brings the Mediterranean to mind, but also reminds me of the summers of my childhood in the Los Angeles area, so hot and damp it makes you feel sick. This feeling mingles with Thora's mental and physical degradation throughout the novel and serves to explain some of the more irrational responses she has to various events.
My primary criticism is that while the world this book takes place it has the potential to be fascinating, there's just not enough of it that made it onto the page. The mourning rituals described by Thora are interesting, and seem to reference various in-universe legends, however those legends are barely mentioned and not expanded on nearly enough to satisfy my thirst for lore-dumping. This story could just as easily be set in a fictional 1800s Italian university as opposed to a completely fictional world, so I wish there was more to set it apart.
This book has great mouth-feel. The university has a visceral atmosphere of heat and oppression; sweltering humidity, terra-cotta and plaster spires, and the green bittersweet smell of rotting plant matter. It brings the Mediterranean to mind, but also reminds me of the summers of my childhood in the Los Angeles area, so hot and damp it makes you feel sick. This feeling mingles with Thora's mental and physical degradation throughout the novel and serves to explain some of the more irrational responses she has to various events.
My primary criticism is that while the world this book takes place it has the potential to be fascinating, there's just not enough of it that made it onto the page. The mourning rituals described by Thora are interesting, and seem to reference various in-universe legends, however those legends are barely mentioned and not expanded on nearly enough to satisfy my thirst for lore-dumping. This story could just as easily be set in a fictional 1800s Italian university as opposed to a completely fictional world, so I wish there was more to set it apart.