BOOK REVIEW: WOMAN EATING BY CLAIRE KOHDA

 GOODREADS SUMMARY:

Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can't eat any of these things. Her body doesn't work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs' blood in London--where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time - is much more difficult than she'd anticipated.

Then there are the humans--the other artists at the studio space, the people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men that follow her after dark, and Ben, a boyish, goofy-grinned artist she is developing feelings for. Lydia knows that they are her natural prey, but she can't bring herself to feed on them. In her windowless studio, where she paints and studies the work of other artists, binge-watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer and videos of people eating food on YouTube and Instagram, Lydia considers her place in the world. She has many of the things humans wish for--perpetual youth, near-invulnerability, immortality--but, she is miserable; she is lonely, and she is hungry--always hungry.

As Lydia develops as a woman and an artist, she will learn that she must reconcile the conflicts within her--between her demon and human sides, her mixed ethnic heritage, and her relationship with food, and, in turn, humans if she is to find a way to exist in the world. Before any of this, however, she must eat.

TEE'S THOUGHTS

Lydia is a millennial, and like a lot of millennials she is a bit sad and lonely in her life, but to make things worse for her, she is also a vampire. Her mother, who is also a vampire and has spent her life providing food for Lydia is now in a nursing home and Lydia is having to navigate life on her own, which means trying to blend in with the humans.

We all spend some point in our lives trying to figure out life, and like Lydia, we all feel different from the people around us, and we really just want to be liked, to be loved. Imagine what this would be like if you had to throw in the ffact that you wre a vampire, you had to hide your true identy from people and you had to eat...blood.

Don't expect blood and gore from Woman, Eating, this isnt that type of vampire story. This is the story of Lydia and her coming into adulthood on her own, and is told to the reader by Lydia's own narrative. Infact, there are times where you will forget you are reading a vampire story, it gets lost in the story of life, and then the author will remind you bringing back to the front of your mind. I myself loved Lydia and much appreciated how the author focused on her human qualities.

Kohda's storytelling and writing are interesting and well exacuted it is an brillent new take on the vampire story, but also a study of restraint, and how a woman might not fit into societies expectations.