Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda (Virago, £14.99)
A young artist arrives in London for an internship at a prestigious gallery. Without enough money for another room, she plans to sleep on the floor of her unfurnished studio. Lydia is the daughter of a Japanese father and a half-British, half-Malaysian mother, but what really sets her apart is that she’s a vampire. After her vampire mother vowed never to kill another human being, the two of them survived on fresh pigs’ blood, but alone in London, Lydia struggles to find nourishment. Blood sausage barely staves off the pangs, and she can’t digest the oats. As her hunger grows, she imagines she might starve out the vampire part of herself; watching food videos online, she considers her heritage: “In most Asian cultures … there is no reverence for the vampiric monster as there is in the West; most blood-sucking things are women … ” The most unusual, original and strikingly contemporary vampire novel to come along in years.
