Michael Barnes
This is not your traditional vampire novel, immortal undead predators who view humanity as a food source. This is the story of Lyida (she chooses Lyd) a twenty-something millennial artist from a dual-heritage background trying to wrestle with her place in the modern world much like most of her generation.
Much of this struggle arises from her mother who turned her when she was an infant who from a never clearly established failing to thrive and seemed would have died. Many of Lyd's struggles arise from her image that her mother gave of her vampiric nature being dirty, only deserving of surviving on pigs blood, the filthiest of animals (Lyd's later observations that pigs aren't filthy by nature but made to live so by humans is one of the many metaphors this story illustrates.
As Quinn of What's Quinn reading describes "…has to balance the ravenous “demon” within her alongside her more human impulses, as well as her feelings about her mixed ethnic heritage, a fledgling career in the arts, and her relationship with food. (God, the descriptions of food in this novel both delighted and repulsed me in equal measure. Will not look at milk the same way again.) How is she supposed to exist in the world? Without any parental supervision, she starts to find out"
Also the setting in the Arts community in a London provide further allusions to the roll of art and artist, truth and artifice and a reflection for what it means to Lyd being what she is and for her what she wants as a life. I enjoyed her ruminations on why is it Vampires in literature have amassed wealth, power property and she thinks it likely she is going to run out of rent on a place to live in months.
Also, like Quinn it recalled to mind for me Chelsea G. Summers’ A Certain Hunger.
"It’s another stellar addition to the character-driven Sad Fucked Up Women trend that is all over literary fiction right now, with its sparse prose and subdued plotting. Like a Sally Rooney or Otessa Moshfegh novel, only the main character’s favourite food is pig’s blood".
This is not your traditional vampire novel, immortal undead predators who view humanity as a food source. This is the story of Lyida (she chooses Lyd) a twenty-something millennial artist from a dual-heritage background trying to wrestle with her place in the modern world much like most of her generation.
Much of this struggle arises from her mother who turned her when she was an infant who from a never clearly established failing to thrive and seemed would have died. Many of Lyd's struggles arise from her image that her mother gave of her vampiric nature being dirty, only deserving of surviving on pigs blood, the filthiest of animals (Lyd's later observations that pigs aren't filthy by nature but made to live so by humans is one of the many metaphors this story illustrates.
As Quinn of What's Quinn reading describes "…has to balance the ravenous “demon” within her alongside her more human impulses, as well as her feelings about her mixed ethnic heritage, a fledgling career in the arts, and her relationship with food. (God, the descriptions of food in this novel both delighted and repulsed me in equal measure. Will not look at milk the same way again.) How is she supposed to exist in the world? Without any parental supervision, she starts to find out"
Also the setting in the Arts community in a London provide further allusions to the roll of art and artist, truth and artifice and a reflection for what it means to Lyd being what she is and for her what she wants as a life. I enjoyed her ruminations on why is it Vampires in literature have amassed wealth, power property and she thinks it likely she is going to run out of rent on a place to live in months.
Also, like Quinn it recalled to mind for me Chelsea G. Summers’ A Certain Hunger.
"It’s another stellar addition to the character-driven Sad Fucked Up Women trend that is all over literary fiction right now, with its sparse prose and subdued plotting. Like a Sally Rooney or Otessa Moshfegh novel, only the main character’s favourite food is pig’s blood".