Name: Clara Gauthier's review of Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
Item: Hungerstone
Rating: 5
Author: Clara Gauthier

Kat Dunn

Ten years into their marriage, Lenore’s relationship with her husband, Henry, has soured, and no child has arrived to fill the distance between them. Lenore’s frustration grows when Henry’s ambitions, both work and societal, take them out of London and into the countryside, to the imposing Nethershaw manor, where he is planning to host a hunt. Lenore keeps a terrible secret from the last time her husband hunted, and though they never speak of it, it haunts their marriage to this day.

A carriage accident near their home soon brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore’s life. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night; Carmilla who will not eat meals with the family; Carmilla who stirs up a hunger deep within Lenore.

Torn between regaining her husband’s affection and the desire Carmilla’s presence awakens in her, Lenore begins to unravel her past. Her search leads her to uncover a darkness in her household that’s set on destroying her.

Hungerstone is a mesmerizing reclamation of the lesbian vampire trope, set against the backdrop of the voracious appetite of the Industrial Revolution.

Hungerstone

Romy

My body is my enemy and I will use any weapon in my arsenal against it.

Essence

"What a small, pathetic future you build." She leans forward. "I wonder for what you hunger, and whether you allow yourself to feel it."

𝒦

god i love horror centered around wanting and the disgust that comes when you have not let yourself want before. beautifully queer and gothic and exactly what i want in a carmilla adaption/inspired novel. i am rotating this novel in my mind

Clara Gauthier

"I am a woman woken from thirty years slumber, and I would eat the world should it satisfy this empty, keening void where my heart should be. I would cry with grief over my life so unfulfilled, and drink down the salty tears, eat my worthless tongue and impotent fingers, skin this carcass and pick the bones clean." 

This book puts to paper a true hunger, an appetite for nothing and yet everything entirely. It captures rage, jealously, hatred, and disgust in a way that's so vivid. 

Miryam 

"I am a woman woken from thirty years slumber, and I would eat the world should it satisfy this empty, keening void where my heart should be. I would cry with grief over my life so unfulfilled, and drink down the salty tears, eat my worthless tongue and impotent fingers, skin this carcass and pick the bones clean." 

This book puts to paper a true hunger, an appetite for nothing and yet everything entirely. It captures rage, jealously, hatred, and disgust in a way that's so vivid. 

Beautiful and gothic atmospheric "spin-off" of "Carmilla" that started very slow (and a little boring) but ultimately really won me over. The plotting is a little uneven but what really works in it is that focus remains on Lenore. Instead of trying to build on the character of Carmilla, "Hungerstone" chooses to look at the themes of the original story (through a contemporary lense) and at the general representation of vampiric hunger and the female vampire. While exploration of the themes could have gone deeper (this is a relatively short novel), the brevity works within the novel as their interpretation is presented through the experience of one woman.

The result is not obsessively brilliant but I need to rate the novel higher as it managed to me invested in the story.

Beautiful and gothic atmospheric "spin-off" of "Carmilla" that started very slow (and a little boring) but ultimately really won me over. The plotting is a little uneven but what really works in it is that focus remains on Lenore. Instead of trying to build on the character of Carmilla, "Hungerstone" chooses to look at the themes of the original story (through a contemporary lense) and at the general representation of vampiric hunger and the female vampire. While exploration of the themes could have gone deeper (this is a relatively short novel), the brevity works within the novel as their interpretation is presented through the experience of one woman.

The result is not obsessively brilliant but I need to rate the novel higher as it managed to me invested in the story.

I had really high hopes for this book and it really did deliver. I couldn’t put it down for a second, which was insane because I’ve been battling a reading slump. I adored the writing, it was so beautifully written and sometimes I would come across a line or paragraph and just go :o.

“Something impatient and snappish has swollen inside me. I feel as though I carry some fragile, painful growth in my throat, and every small challenge or inconvenience threatens to burst open the pustule and fill my mouth with poison.”  Like… don’t even joke lad.

I thought the characters were really well written. I love how Lenore’s trauma was explored and how astutely it manifested in her life choices. Was Cora really just naive and annoying, or were her actions calculated?? I don’t really know and I love that. Carmilla was such a bitch it was so hot, stronger women than Lenore have folded for much less. I wish we had explored their relationship a bit more because their dynamic was so interesting.

The story was so intriguing and the build up was intoxicating. I couldn’t wait to reach the end and see how it all came together in the end. Unfortunately, I felt like the author built up to something that she didn’t deliver. The whole book was alluding to grotesque things and I think the build up there was great. The sprinkling of mildly disturbing things happening throughout the book was great, but because of that I expected more for the ending. Even though I didn’t really get the grotesquely horrifying ending I was expecting , the story was still wrapped up in a way I wanted so it’s all good.

bel 

I had really high hopes for this book and it really did deliver. I couldn’t put it down for a second, which was insane because I’ve been battling a reading slump. I adored the writing, it was so beautifully written and sometimes I would come across a line or paragraph and just go :o.

“Something impatient and snappish has swollen inside me. I feel as though I carry some fragile, painful growth in my throat, and every small challenge or inconvenience threatens to burst open the pustule and fill my mouth with poison.”  Like… don’t even joke lad.

I thought the characters were really well written. I love how Lenore’s trauma was explored and how astutely it manifested in her life choices. Was Cora really just naive and annoying, or were her actions calculated?? I don’t really know and I love that. Carmilla was such a bitch it was so hot, stronger women than Lenore have folded for much less. I wish we had explored their relationship a bit more because their dynamic was so interesting.

The story was so intriguing and the build up was intoxicating. I couldn’t wait to reach the end and see how it all came together in the end. Unfortunately, I felt like the author built up to something that she didn’t deliver. The whole book was alluding to grotesque things and I think the build up there was great. The sprinkling of mildly disturbing things happening throughout the book was great, but because of that I expected more for the ending. Even though I didn’t really get the grotesquely horrifying ending I was expecting , the story was still wrapped up in a way I wanted so it’s all good.



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Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

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Hungerstone by Kat Dunn