A review by starrysteph
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

The Book Eaters offered up a fascinating concept and - I believe - intended to weave in powerful commentary about disability. Unfortunately, I felt this work was so poorly executed that it actually became harmful & put forth unsettling rhetoric.

When I finished reading, I felt uncomfortable – something about the text simply felt “off”. After reflecting and journaling about it and talking to some fellow readers, I’ve found some clarity and I’ll try to break it apart into the components that felt harmful to me. 

SPOILERS BELOW.

Disability Allegory
The author had a compelling commentary to make - I acknowledge her efforts at tackling something that is quite important and also so complicated. She is autistic and I don’t wish to invalidate her identity or experiences. But I believe this work (as it currently stands) does more harm than it offers thoughtful commentary.

The mind eaters are intended to be an allegory for disability. We are therefore viewing them as a marginalized group, and told that some are “good” and “useful” while others are “bad” and “harmful”. They can be “good” if handled by a drug called “Redemption”, given to them by their abusive handlers who institutionalize them. The book eater society is looking into ways to manage fertility - basically so that they can eliminate mind eaters entirely.

This is a snippet from a scene in which a mind eater consumes the mind of a child: “She’d destroyed that infant before giving it back. The child would have missed all its developmental milestones, by not showing emotion or personality or making attempts to communicate. All the things Devon had taken such joy in with her own children would never belong to that woman. Ten minutes to ruin a whole chain of lives.” (This is ableist language, and it is never addressed or resolved.)

Devon’s child (Cai) is a mind eater, and she is both afraid of him and treats him like an adult (he is a five year old child). She repeatedly wonders if there is any bit of soul left in him.

On Devon and Cai’s relationship: “Biologically she was his parent and always would be, but emotionally they had become something closer to partners in crime; mutual abusers locked in codependency.”

Now I believe all of the above is intended to be commentary - challenging us to consider how society treats disabled people, and how parents treat & view their disabled children. But intent does not equal impact, and the plot of the story makes it difficult for readers to comprehend that the eugenics rhetoric is, well, harmful.

Also, in the author’s FAQ she says that no characters are specifically meant to be autistic (alongside this concerning reason): “I do find it easier to write monster characters, though, because if I inadvertently give them autistic traits, neurotypical readers are less likely to complain, as they’re expecting something ur-human anyway.” 

Nearly all of the mind eaters are condemned at the end of the novel & die unnecessarily. The survivors? Hester, a mind eater who has had her own long tongue docked so she can’t hurt anyone, and Cai, a child who is basically determined to be “soulless” because his insatiable desire to prey on the innocent has wiped away his own identity. It felt like the messaging became … eugenics is the way to go! These ~creatures~ SHOULD be neutralized because they are innately monstrous. I don’t think I need to explain why this messaging is harmful.

Religious Aspects
“The book eaters did what they have always done best: encourage human technology to advance from the shadows, and then borrow from it. The basics of IVF they mastered long ago…”

The book eaters are scary, inhumans foreigners who have a shadow society and secretly control human progress from afar (these are often red flags for antisemitism). The book eaters are vampirically inspired, and Devon’s family specifically was a nod to Dracula, who has antisemitic origins. (Note: I don’t believe vampires are inherently antisemitic, but it is important to acknowledge their history - and if you are including them in your work of fiction, you should a. do your research on the history of these characterizations and b. employ a sensitivity reader to help catch potential pitfalls or unfortunate tropes.)

Within the text, the book eater society is framed in many ways as Christian. The mind eaters - by extension - read as “disgraced” Christians who feed on the bodies of the innocent (similar to blood libel tropes, and a sub-society of mind eaters even does a sacrificial ritual using an innocent body in the ending segment of the book). In a chapter introduction, mind eaters specifically are linked to Lilith.

Other Issues
Those were the two issues that stood out the most to me, but I didn’t feel as though the queer representation and the framing of women were handled particularly well. The writing conflates ace and aro identities. It wasn’t clear why it would be an issue for a male book eater to be asexual (in fact, you would think the opposite). Devon’s insta-love attraction to Hester and her thought patterns around her queerness were … strange. (It was very “straight woman writing a lesbian” if you know what I mean.) It felt very sloppy.

The women in this book are treated terribly. Now again, that isn’t inherently a problem with the text (and in fact I believe is also attempted commentary), but the issue I had here was that the way women were treated was frequently VALIDATED within the text. Devon and the other Book Eater women are infantilized, treated as cattle who cannot think for themselves or be trusted to make decisions. And Devon truly cannot! I’m also a little alarmed that the author did not include a warning for sexual assault or rape in her content warnings. Did she view Devon’s forced pregnancies as consensual???

Finally, I was just generally let down by the concept. Book eaters were such a cool idea - but ultimately the book-eating aspect didn’t play a significant role in the story at all. The plotting and limitations of the families  just didn’t make sense. The attempted feminist critiques played to the individuals and not the systems.

In the author’s notes, she leaves a few comments about the bleakness of the material. 
“That impenetrable sense of exhaustion and flat, dull, continuous lack of joy is a common experience for many. We do not all lead happy lives, and I suppose that makes it hard to write happy fiction.”
“The reality of our world is that most suffering is pointless, most stories [aren’t] happy, and sexual violence is the norm [rather] than the exception.”

Well. Message received.

This was not the review I had hoped to leave for The Book Eaters. But I wanted to warn other potential readers of its content. I truly wish the author the best for her future works, and perhaps with some more eyes on future projects she can nail down some powerful commentary. 

CW: sexual assault, rape, forced pregnancy, domestic abuse, child abuse (physical & emotional), murder, drug use, alcoholism, body horror, gore, violence, sex trafficking, homophobia, extreme sexism, infertility. gaslighting, grief, starvation, gun violence, car accident

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