Claire Kohda's debut, Woman, Eating, is an insightful and hypnotic exploration of hunger. Its young vampire protagonist, Lydia, a recent art school graduate, is starved--not only for blood but for belonging.
Lydia's obsessive consumption of YouTube food videos to try to satiate this intractable hunger is the perfect analogy of vampire yearning. Her inability to eat isolates her from her human coworkers and prevents her from experiencing a vital part of her paternal, Japanese culture. As she ponders, while watching what a particular fashion model eats in one day, many of these videos feel educational: "Lots of them take that tone, as though their message is: if you eat like me, you will become me."
Through Lydia's mixed-race heritage and particular vampire traits, Kohda deftly tackles difficult, and common, themes--including sexism, racism, assault, job insecurity and social isolation. Despite her supernatural powers, Lydia struggles with feelings of helplessness and vulnerability as she navigates these experiences and seeks ways to discover her own voice, purpose and strength.
"The urge I feel is to return to painting... and to see if I can find the shape of myself in whatever I create." The use of art as a tool for this self-discovery is one of the many highlights of Woman, Eating. It is a way for Lydia to share herself with the humans around her, independent of her vampire mother's expectations, while simultaneously helping her feel kinship with her human, artist father. --Grace Rajendran, freelance reviewer and literary events producer