Michael Barnes
Yes it’s a gothic lesbian vampire story which while it begins with the two women, its narrative unfolds across centuries. The unnamed vampire recounts her early life and after witnessing the brutal deaths of her Maker and her sisters at the hands of enraged villagers flees Europe for the distant coast of Argentina. Less a Dracula-like figure arriving at Whitby on the deserted Demeter, and more of a lost scavenger, uninterested in human lives even as she grieves her own losses. Buenos Aires deserted by its men leaving for war and then ravaged by yellow fever and a mysterious pale women who is rumoured to feast on those who open their doors. As time passes, though, the city proves itself to be equally unsafe for a creature of the night. In the wake of betrayal and tragedy brought on by her nature, and after meeting a young cemetery groundskeeper who is entranced by both her beauty and her monstrosity, she locks herself inside a coffin in an abandoned tomb to live out a solitary and thirsty eternity. As the world transforms around her—moving from isolated villages into cosmopolitan, interconnected cities, the vampire must adapt her existence in order to intermingle. In the same city in the present day, a seemingly ordinary woman struggles to cope with the terminal illness of her own mother while also looking after her young son. When she sees the vampire for the first time in a Buenos Aires cemetery at the opening of the novel, the two women stories are to intersect and I think the ending whilst melancholic is satisfying and moving.
"This is a conflicted, confused, and introspective monster with enough of broken moral compass to make this interesting" . Rachel Friars at the Lesbrary
Yes it’s a gothic lesbian vampire story which while it begins with the two women, its narrative unfolds across centuries. The unnamed vampire recounts her early life and after witnessing the brutal deaths of her Maker and her sisters at the hands of enraged villagers flees Europe for the distant coast of Argentina. Less a Dracula-like figure arriving at Whitby on the deserted Demeter, and more of a lost scavenger, uninterested in human lives even as she grieves her own losses. Buenos Aires deserted by its men leaving for war and then ravaged by yellow fever and a mysterious pale women who is rumoured to feast on those who open their doors. As time passes, though, the city proves itself to be equally unsafe for a creature of the night. In the wake of betrayal and tragedy brought on by her nature, and after meeting a young cemetery groundskeeper who is entranced by both her beauty and her monstrosity, she locks herself inside a coffin in an abandoned tomb to live out a solitary and thirsty eternity. As the world transforms around her—moving from isolated villages into cosmopolitan, interconnected cities, the vampire must adapt her existence in order to intermingle. In the same city in the present day, a seemingly ordinary woman struggles to cope with the terminal illness of her own mother while also looking after her young son. When she sees the vampire for the first time in a Buenos Aires cemetery at the opening of the novel, the two women stories are to intersect and I think the ending whilst melancholic is satisfying and moving.
"This is a conflicted, confused, and introspective monster with enough of broken moral compass to make this interesting" . Rachel Friars at the Lesbrary