CBR 14 Bingo: Font
I do like that dripping red font, like it’s been chalked on. Also Lydia is a font of misery.
Lydia is a vampire – has been all her life, since her mother turned her as an infant. Now she’s living on her own for the first time, and having trouble tracking down blood.
Though I did not know there was a term for them, I have long been aware of the Sad, Strange, Miserable Women that populate the modern literary landscape. Generally I have avoided them, if only because I can contrive to be miserable enough without heaping the troubles of fictional people atop it. But this book is different, because Lydia’s alienation is way more literal – she is no longer human.
It’s a pretty excellent metaphor. And the book has a wonderfully claustrophobic quality to it, sinister despite not very many things that are sinister on the surface happening. Lydia’s relationship with food is also an interesting read, both in itself and in how it speaks for her loneliness.
However, I felt that the central plot was simply too thin for the length of the novel. I skated through this book pretty fast, but that’s because a lot of it is just Lydia’s juddering thoughts and self-reflections. I also thought the ending was very predictable – I knew where we were going after Lydia’s first few days of work. This might have worked better as a novella, or even a short story.