Woman, Eating

'Absolutely brilliant - Kohda takes the vampire trope and makes it her own' Ruth Ozeki

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Pub Date 24 Mar 2022 | Archive Date 23 Jun 2022

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Description

'Absolutely brilliant - tragic, funny, eccentric . . . Claire Kohda takes the vampire trope and makes it her own' RUTH OZEKI
Lydia is hungry.
She's always wanted to try sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea 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 this. 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 people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men who follow her after dark, and Ben, a 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.

If Lydia is to find a way to exist in the world, 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.

Before any of this, however, she must eat.

'Witty and thought-provoking' Stylist
'Blistering' Glamour
'A modern day vampire thriller' BBC
'Unusual, original and strikingly contemporary' Guardian
'Deliciously fresh' Waterstones
'A wholly 21st century take on bloodsucking' Observer
'Fascinating' BookRiot
'Pumps fresh blood into the horror genre' The Times

A BOOK OF 2022 IN HARPER'S BAZAAR, DAILY MAIL, GLAMOUR, BBC, HUFFPOST, TOR.COM

'Absolutely brilliant - tragic, funny, eccentric . . . Claire Kohda takes the vampire trope and makes it her own' RUTH OZEKI
Lydia is hungry.
She's always wanted to try sashimi, ramen, onigiri with...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780349015613
PRICE £14.99 (GBP)
PAGES 256

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Average rating from 102 members


Featured Reviews

An interesting take on the vampire novel, I’ll be thinking about this for a long time to come - certainly every time I check the nutritional info on the back of packaged food! I found the matter-of-factness refreshing, as well as the daily frustrations - how to get decent black pudding, for example. Less supernatural, more surprisingly thought-provoking, and all the better for it.

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I'm not entirely sure what I just read,but I liked it.
It certainly doesn't fit into the usual vampire story.

A little bit amusing,a little bit self searching,a little bit angsty (in a good way).

Different,and that's always great.

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Woman, Eating is a novel about hunger and trying to live on your own, as a vampire adjusts to living without her mother and looks for artistic direction. Lydia has been a vampire since she was a baby, living with her mother in a reasonably regular life. But now her mother is in a care home and Lydia has an internship at a London gallery. The trouble is, she’s hungry, and what she needs isn’t what she wants.

This is a different take on the vampire novel, a literary vampire story that focuses on food and hunger, and being caught between worlds and cultures. Lydia’s vampire side keeps her away from her dead father by stopping her from trying Japanese food, and a lot of the focus of the novel is on the importance of eating, identity, and the in between. She is directionless, like a lot of young protagonists trying to find themselves, but partly because she cannot form connections, cannot envision her eternity.

The concept of a vampire enjoying what I eat in a day videos is an amazing one, and in general I really enjoyed the way this book explores vampires as being caught between worlds and also having difficulties, both relatable and not, forging a place in the modern world. The narrative doesn’t really go anywhere so it’s not one for someone expecting a plot, but instead it takes the directionless artsy millennial trope and gives it a different angle.

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Thanks to NetGallery for the advanced readers copy.

Vampires have crossed over from YA to Literary Fiction and I'm excited. At the heart of Woman, Eating is an aspiring artist (and vampire) named Lydia who moves out of her home for the first time where her mum has kept a careful watch over her. Wondering whether "passing" as a human like her mum wants her to is really living, Lydia starts experimenting with food and her lifestyle to find out for herself. Kohda covers themes of misogyny, food, and what it means to be a human (or not) in this funny and easy to read novel. Her exploration of race is particularly interesting: she juxtaposes it with the persecution the MC could face were she to reveal her Vampirehood.

Considering some of the hefty topics discussed, Woman, Eating is quite a lighthearted novel which is very refreshing. At the same time, it left me wanting more - I think I could have read a whole book based on the MC's mother. If you're looking for something a bit different, Woman, Eating is definitely worth a read. I will be sure to keep eye on Claire Kohda but not only for her writing but she's also a professional musician!

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Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley of an ARC of this book.
This is ultimately a book about hunger and acceptance. We meet Lydia, a vampire, striking out on her own after living with her Mum her whole life and exploring what it means to be to be independent. She is caught between worlds and feels that she doesn't know how to fit in, despite being a vampire there is something very relatable about her. Lydia struggles with her identity as a half vampire, half human, half Japanese, half British, female contending with imposter syndrome as she tries to establish herself in the art world, following in the footsteps of her famous, deceased father. She also has to contend with her Mother's 'illness' and beliefs which essentially have resulted in self harm and abuse of Lydia her whole life. As Lydia grapples with these conflicting ideas of who she should be and who she is, she starves herself as she tries to force herself into a certain mould, only when she truly accepts who she is can she start to feel fulfilled.
I really enjoyed this different take on a vampire novel. The image of a vampire sitting there watching videos of people eating, the idea that drinking the blood of an animal or person enables you to experience their life, and the various Buffy references.

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Woman, Eating is a very clever novel. Beautifully written in crystal-clear prose, Kohda’s sly take on the well-worn vampire trope digs into classic coming-of-age questions around the journey to agency and independence, offering a feminist, post-MeToo spin to the usual vampiric metaphors around sexual power plays and ‘hunger’ in all forms.

Protagonist Lyd's own attempts to discover what it might cost to satisfy her desire to be her 'true' self is beautifully mirrored in the artists and acquaintances she comes into contact with - all of whom are all themselves wrestling with the degree to which they're willing to 'sell their souls' for the success they crave. Smart, funny, tender and brutal – highly recommend.

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🍲Woman, eating🍲

🍣by Claire Kohda🍣

🍎Spoiler free review🍎

Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea 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 this. 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 people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men who follow her after dark, and Ben, a 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.

If Lydia is to find a way to exist in the world, 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. Before any of this, however, she must eat.

🍎🍎🍎

Woman, eating is not your average vampire novel. Lydia, turned as a baby by her vampire mother, is to trying to live on her own for the first time. Her mother raised her with no understanding of what she is, and taught her to believe that she is evil, and undeserving of anything good.

This book was really low key and subtle, but tackles a lot of different issues. Various trigger warnings here but a strong one is for features of disordered eating. Lydia thinks about food obsessively, but denies herself in an attempt to starve her demon half.

This was an interesting take on vampire mythology, and I enjoyed Lydia’s journey to discovering herself.

If you enjoy vampire stories that are outside the norm, and a contemporary setting, you will probably like this one!

Released on March 24th, 2022.

Thanks to @netgalley and @littlebrownbookgroup_uk for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Weird + rather wonderful : Identity, living with shadow, connection, art + blood

Lydia, like her mother, is a vampire, though neither were born so, both being turned. Lyd was turned by her own mother, as a tiny baby. However, nothing is as simple as it might seem. Is it ever? Lydia’s mother, now living in a care facility, had, all her life, fought against her sanguinary infection. She denied her vampiric state, and passed this denial on to her daughter. Mother and daughter subsisted on pig blood bought from a butcher, hiding their food, their nature, all their lives

There are many themes lurking within this story. The relationship between vampire mother and vampire daughter is as complex and knotty, so it seems, as this can be for many. Part of Lyd’s journey is around what she has fought against in her own nature, her shadow side, which her mother denotes as ‘the demon’. Mother and daughter feel a split between what is human, and what is demonic. Added to the complexity of finding and owning identity is a dimension of ethnicity and culture. Lyd’s dead father, fully human, was Japanese. She longs to embrace all aspects of that inheritance.

Because Lyd (and her mother) are obsessed with what they can and must eat, and what they can’t and wish they could eat, this is also a story about food, obsession, denial, control.

Vampires, according to legend, are immortal, revived by the blood of another. Immortality, the universal desire for this in some form or other, gives another major theme. Most of us respond to this drumbeat by passing on our genetic ‘immortality’ – the urge to procreate, But, stamping identity upon history – fame beyond death, may be another route. Art can be seen as a way of cheating individual mortality. And Lydia is an artist.

Coming to London, as part of her necessary journey away from the umbilical link to her mother, Lyd rents space within an artists collective rental building. She is also an intern at a prestigious gallery

Kohda has created a completely tangible, realistic, other way of living within present day London. She writes beautifully and thought provokingly. This is a world away from Gothic horror.

In fact, Lyd in many ways seems the most ‘human’ being within the book. Knowledge, self reflection, awareness of her own shadow, renders this vampire far more sensitive to the sufferings of others than many of those she moves among.

At times, the art debates seemed to fight with narrative drive a little too much, so that the novel itself sailed a little close to appearing as a device to discourse theories about ‘pure art’ and art becoming the servant of commerce, hence my loss of final star

I was pleased I read this, offered as an ARC, and will certainly want to read more by Kohda

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Kohda's novel presents a different take on the vampiric myth and delves into what it means to be human and to be the Other concurrently, whilst exploring bith the importance of hunger and of eating and the link between food and identity, be it personal and cultural.

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I really enjoyed this unusual, engaging book, that raises interesting questions and carries you along.

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This is one of those novels that you can’t help but devour quickly. It makes you hungry to read more because you’re waiting for the starving vampire at its heart to end its fast.

Lyd is of mixed heritage – she has a Japanese father and a half-Malaysian mother, and, though she appears human and can wander outside in the day time if she’s thoroughly covered up and wearing sunglasses and sunscreen, she is a vampire. A vampire whose vampire mother lost her mind when she lost her vampire teeth. Lyd has put her mother in a home – even though said mother only looks like she’s in her mid-forties – so that she can pursue her life as an artist. But her mother was in charge of keeping her fed and Lyd doesn’t know how to find pig’s blood in the city…

As you would expect from a vampire novel, a series of power dynamics are explored. The workings of the art world, capitalism, idealism, feminism, self-expression and identity all churn away under a surface of one hungry young girl just trying to make her way in the world. There is a love-interest and an older man, naturally.

Who are the real monsters? Well, read the book and find out.

I enjoyed the references to Baba Yaga, the Russian witch of fairy-tale fame who has a house with chicken legs and the fact that the home her mother is in is called Crimson Orchard (well, that’s just a matter of time!…). Kohda also took on the vampire myth and gave it some interesting twists.

Irreverent, funny and filled with early twenties angst, Woman, Eating is a great fun read that comes out in March this year.

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I enjoyed this very different take on a vampire novel. It made a refreshing change from the young sparkly vampire tales I have read, it was a lot darker and quite thought provoking. I liked the main character and the pace of the book was fine. I thought the writer had managed to take a well known genre and turn it on it's head. I felt sympathy for the struggle the main character was going through and the book felt quite sad in places., a good book that may not suit everyone but a book that I will remember.

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Women, Eating tells the story of Lydia, a young woman who after putting her mother into a residential home, is living alone for the first time in her life. It’s the first time she has had to get her own food, look after herself and have a life that isn’t centred around her overwhelming and complicated mother. She also has a prestigious internship at an art gallery that could open doors for her into the art world which would change her life. Oh, and Lydia is a vampire.

Kodak’s version of the vampire is really interesting as she adapts the genre to create a mythology of her own. Despite the abundance of vampires in pop culture, her version is very distinctive and innovative in several ways rather than derivative or referential. The ways Kodak used food as a way to deconstruct the alienation Lydia feels not only from humanity but from her culture by way of her identity as the daughter of a Malaysian mother and Japanese father. This was done in a really powerful way which worked effectively to enhance her character.

At times Lydia did feel a bit too flawless, almost a little Mary Sue like but what made up for it for me was the ways Kodak made her own mythology unreliable. Everything Lydia knows about herself comes from her mother who is clearly unreliable and subjective, allowing by default a narrator that isn’t definitive regardless. I didn’t always like Lydia but by the end of the book I realised you don’t have to (even though it feels like you are supposed to) to appreciate the very clever things the book is trying to do,

Definitely worth reading if you are interested in vampire stories, the art world and stories focused on introspection and identity.

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I. Absolutely. Loved this.
I read it in one day (not a single sitting, tho I think I could have) and I was constantly excited by the plot, the use of language, the characters. I should say now that on a more precise scale I'm unsure if my rating would be a 5 or a 4.5 - I kind of wanted it to culminate in something more in-your-face. It has a great ending, and one that I think lets me reflect on it as a more complete and better story than a louder ending, but a story like this makes you wonder how dark they're willing to get. I loved the descriptions of food, and felt like I could visualise the characters, settings and emotions, which is very rare for me. There are some loose ends (the luggage, for one) but I'm not really bothered by them.

One small thing, if this is for proofs - I felt there should have been a line in it mentioning that she was going to sleep in her room despite not being allowed to. I was a bit confused by that rule being given at the beginning and then her just wordlessly breaking it and seeming to move in, unsure what 'studio' meant in that capacity.

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I really enjoyed this book. It was strangely compelling and I had to hold myself back from gorging on it, draining it dry too quickly. It took a few pages to get into the style, which is quite descriptive of mundane things but once I was in, I was really in.
Lyd is a vampire, who needs blood to survive and is immortal. But Kohda cleverly turns vampirism into a symbol for larger, more interesting ideas: being mixed race, colonialisation, intergenerational trauma, self-hatred and gender-based self-hatred, sexual assault. The symbolism of vampirism is never done with a heavy hand - as you read, you catch snatches of these bigger ideas and meanings and then if you want to, you can carry on following the character and plot or you can sit and really ponder what's being said. It's a clever book that never forces you to recognise that intelligence and never makes you feel like you're not clever enough. It's a very contemporary mix of high and low culture - references to modern art and the Tate mingling with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and What I Eat In A Day Youtube videos. It doesn't differentiate between different types of culture, creating something that is erudite without being inaccessible.
Lyd is an interesting character to follow but you don't feel much for her, which I didn't find a problem. Her thinking and ideas, how she interacts with our world, what she does is the most interesting thing and that's what we follow and are compelled by, not her personality. When I was about 10% in, fascinated by the book, I looked up what other readers were saying on GoodReads. I was surprised to see that the reviews weren't that positive because I was really enjoying it. I think it's not a book with mass, popular appeal because it's focused and specific in style, concept and writing - if you relate, you really relate, and the book isn't interested in connecting to every single person. I do think this book is going to be one that if you get, you really love, but if you don't get it, it just really feels like it's not for you. Luckily, I loved the book and urge everyone to give it a try at least.
I wasn't too sure about the ending - maybe because I wanted more, I wanted to really know what was going to happen to her in the future. Maybe I didn't like the ending because it meant I couldn't follow Lyd around anymore. Or maybe it was because I felt she was in some way ending how she was starting, practically at least, without getting what she wanted. But maybe she could never get that thing. I still haven't figured out what I feel about the ending which I think is a good sign about the book, showing that is sticks around even after the last page is read. It's definitely a book I want to talk to people about, or even write an essay on.
If you like books about ideas, about relationships especially between mother and daughters, about what it means to be human or exist or inhabit the body you're in, definitely pick up this book.

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There used to be a time when fiction shelves were full of Vampire stories. With Twilight and its sparkly-skinned romance angle being the peak, we’ve seen a lot of attempts to re-invent the classic Dracula story to meet modern day society. This has usually led to me rolling my eyes whenever vampire stories are mentioned, however Woman, Eating is a really refreshing take on a saturated genre.

The novella focuses on Lydia, who is half-human, half-vampire as she tries to navigate life without her mother’s guidance. I liked the way that the vampire-ism worked, an aching hunger with the blood she drinks transferring some of the characteristics and emotions of the thing she has eaten. I also liked Lydia’s obsession with ‘eat with me’ style YouTube videos, looking at people eating food she could never eat or enjoy herself. I also liked the inclusion of the slimy boss at the gallery and the exploitation of the ‘interns’ that worked there which really helped to make the book stand out in the here and now.

I do wish there was a little more ‘meat’ to the book though, if you’ll excuse the pun. I would have loved to have found out more about other vampires, for example, or more about the history of how her mother was turned. A lot of the book is focussed on a love story between her and a boy who has a partner and doesn’t seem to be very interesting which was a shame. Lydia spends a lot of time almost dying from hunger and I found her lack of self-preservation to be a little unrealistic. I would have loved the book to be a bit longer (it’s sitting on about 250 pages at the moment), and have more backstory, some grittier content and maybe a more defined plot. This feels very much like a first draft in its current state.

Overall, Woman, Eating is a great first draft at a story – but I’d love it to be worked on more to create something really special. Thank you to NetGalley & Little Brown Book UK – Virago for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

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Not your average vampire novel - this is such a refreshing take on themes of art, food, identity, love and connection. I raced through this sharp, beautifully written novel.

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