Hungerstone by Kat Dunn | Vampire Novel Review
Hungerstone Cover
Hungerstone is a novel that I had seen all over my Instagram feed and so I bit the bullet and decided to borrow it from my local library. I can tell you first hand that I was not disappointed!
As a modern re-telling of Carmilla, this novel tells the story of Lenore, a woman who has spent her life repressing herself and her emotions for survival. Her husband Henry is often away working and leaves her to manage the house alone. As they move closer to his factory in Sheffield, a young woman has a carriage accident and they kindly admit her into their home. Her name, is Carmilla.
The first thing to mention about Hungerstone is that is completely eclipses Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Dunn has taken the simple short story and created something monstrous out of it. The things that Le Fanu only hinted at, the romance between Carmilla and Lenore, the madness that accompanies that longing and the desire of Carmilla to consume, Dunn explores in great depth allowing for a much more delicious and compelling story.
The exploration of female longing and repression I felt was executed masterfully, with the pacing of the novel making me breathless without feeling overly fast. The historical time period Dunn has chosen, whilst she freely admits that she took some liberties as far as location goes, fits perfectly with the repression that Lenore feels, both from her home life and her love life.
The characterisation of Lenore, and to a smaller extent Cora and Carmilla, illustrates wonderfully how women respond differently to tasks assigned to them and I think this distinction, without making it seem as though the domestic life represses all women, is important in telling a truthful and realistic story. In fact, I feel that, as the novel reaches its climax, Cora is a crucial character in allowing the contrast to be seen between repressed and domestic females.
The only small complaint that I do have, and it is minor, is that I felt the ending could have been treated with a touch more delicacy. I understand that the character of Carmilla is wild and feral, but it felt a little as though Lenore’s actions did not feel truthful to her character development, and the ending itself left me slightly unsatisfied. I wanted to see the shooting party!!
Overall though, I have very little to complain about. I mentioned in my review of Carmilla that the novel was too short, this has solved my problems and then some! It is a beautiful, sapphic and vampiric romance that excellently explores the repression of women in domestic roles and how this can manifest itself. I would highly, highly recommend this novel and would rate it 9 out of 10
