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Woman, eating : a novel

by Kohda, Claire,

Format: Print Book 2022
Availability: Available at 7 Libraries 7 of 10 copies

Available (7)
Location Collection Call #
CLP - Downtown First Floor - Fiction Collection FICTION Kohda
Location  CLP - Downtown
 
Collection  First Floor - Fiction Collection
 
Call Number  FICTION Kohda
 
 
Carnegie Library of Homestead Fiction FIC Kohd
Location  Carnegie Library of Homestead
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  FIC Kohd
 
 
Cooper-Siegel Community Library - Sharpsburg New Books HOR FIC KOH
Location  Cooper-Siegel Community Library - Sharpsburg
 
Collection  New Books
 
Call Number  HOR FIC KOH
 
 
Monroeville Public Library Fiction KOHDA CLAIRE
Location  Monroeville Public Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  KOHDA CLAIRE
 
 
Mt. Lebanon Public Library Fiction KOHDA Claire
Location  Mt. Lebanon Public Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  KOHDA Claire
 
 
Northland Public Library Fiction FIC KOHDA
Location  Northland Public Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  FIC KOHDA
 
 
South Park Library Fiction F KOHDA CLAIRE
Location  South Park Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  F KOHDA CLAIRE
 
 
 
Unavailable (3)
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CLP - Main Library First Floor - New Fiction CHECKED OUT
Location  CLP - Main Library
 
Collection  First Floor - New Fiction
 
Status  CHECKED OUT
 
 
CLP - Squirrel Hill Fiction Collection CHECKED OUT
Location  CLP - Squirrel Hill
 
Collection  Fiction Collection
 
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Pleasant Hills Public Library Adult Fiction IN TRANSIT
Location  Pleasant Hills Public Library
 
Collection  Adult Fiction
 
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Summary

An IndieNext Pick! A Best Book of 2022 in Harper's Bazaar, Daily Mail, Glamour, and Thrillist!

Most Anticipated of 2022 in The Millions, Ms. Magazine, LitHub

A young, mixed-race vampire must find a way to balance her deep-seated desire to live amongst humans with her incessant hunger in this stunning debut novel from a writer-to-watch.

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.

"Absolutely brilliant - tragic, funny, eccentric and so perfectly suited to this particularly weird time. Claire Kohda takes the vampire trope and makes it her own in a way that feels fresh and original. Serious issues of race, disability, misogyny, body image, sexual abuse are handled with subtlety, insight, and a lightness of touch. The spell this novel casts is so complete I feel utterly, and happily, bitten." -- Ruth Ozeki, Booker-shortlisted author of A Tale for the Time Being

Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "Mother-daughter relationships are fraught enough even when the parties are not vampires. In this inventive and charming first novel that's more What We Do in the Shadows than Twilight (with resemblances to Milk Fed [2021] and My Year of Rest and Relaxation [2018]), Kohda explores loss--physical, cultural, and personal--and how, demons or not, humans can suck the life out of each other. We expect, we take, we project our feelings on others. As a multiracial London vampire who has just left home, Lydia feels uprooted from her various identities. Food is intrinsic to Asian culture, but she cannot eat anything other than blood. She is not quite alive, and yet she will live forever. She is an artist who must create, but she is in constant fear that she'll destroy in order to sustain herself. To be a vampire, she muses, is not unlike being a woman in a society in which one is either pure or impure, human or monster. Kohda has created a provocative, sympathetic, and satisfying dive into the mind of an unusual young woman at a crossroads."
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "Kohda's delicious debut introduces a young performance artist whose centuries-old mother made her into a vampire as an infant. Lydia, 23, was raised on her mother Julie's self-hating rhetoric and Julie's belief that they "didn't deserve to feel satiated." Her human father, who was a famous Japanese artist, died before her birth, leaving Lydia feeling isolated from both her Japanese and human heritage. When Julie's declining memory makes assisted living necessary, Lydia sets out on her own with a new art studio space in London--unsure whether to continue following her mother's regimen, which called for pig's blood instead of human. Kohda gets off to a slow start, plodding through Lydia's move into her studio and an unfulfilling internship at a gallery. But things pick up after Lydia's store of pig's blood runs out and she begins compulsively watching #WhatIEatInADay videos. Here, Kodha palpably conveys Lydia's disconnection from the human experiences she so desperately wants, and after Lydia takes her first taste of human blood (from a towel used to clean up after a bike accident), she instantly feels all-powerful. The pace quickens, bounding toward a thrilling end, as Lydia questions whether to run from or honor her legacy. Once this gets going, it's great fun. Agent: Sam Copeland, RCW Literary. (Apr.)"
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Additional Information
Subjects Vampires -- Fiction.
Hunger -- Fiction.
Social isolation -- Fiction.
Racially mixed women -- Fiction.
Identity (Psychology) -- Fiction.
Women artists -- England -- London -- Fiction.
London (England) -- Fiction.
Horror fiction.
Psychological fiction.
Vampire fiction.
Publisher New York, NY :HarperVia,2022
Edition First HarperVia edition, First US edition.
Language English
Description 233 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN 9780063140882
0063140888
9780063140899
0063140896
Other Classic View