What if the monster you feared most didn’t destroy you—but helped you come back to life? Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone is a lush, gripping gothic horror that reimagines the classic vampire tale as a meditation on the pain and power of being a woman in a world that demands your self-erasure. Set against the smog-choked backdrop of the industrial revolution, it’s a story of hunger—emotional, physical, and existential—and what it means to finally stop starving yourself.
At the center of the novel is Lenore, a woman ten years into a crumbling marriage to a powerful steel magnate. Her entire identity has been shaped around being a “good wife,” which, in her case, means tending to her husband’s ego while ignoring her own needs—even as the physical toll of that denial becomes too loud to ignore. She’s in pain but refuses to put herself first. She’s exhausted but doesn’t know how to stop performing. In many ways, Hungerstone is the story of what happens when a woman finally admits that her life is hurting her.
Continue reading “The vampire will set you free: Hungerstone by Kat Dunn is the feminist horror novel we’ve been starving for”
Write on the World 