“Hungerstone” by Kat Dunn

“Hungerstone” was supposed to be a retelling of “Carmilla” by J. Sheridan Le Fanu, or at least was inspired by the famous gothic novella. However, the message of Kat Dunn’s book elevates it to the “female rage” and “good for her” literary dimension, lightly sprinkled of horror, which in itself contains a large share of its appeal to the audience, because what genre can better translate the experience of living in a female body if not horror.

The novella written by Le Fanu was ahead of its time with subtle but very much present queer connotations, however, in “Hungerstone” a romantic relationship between a young woman bound in a loveless marriage and her enigmatic guest becomes much more evident and physical. The main protagonist of the novel, Lenore (a name that occurs in Edgar Allan Poe poem) has apparently remained her attraction to the opposite sex even after her sensual awakening with Carmilla, but nevertheless “Hungerstone” could be regarded as a queer novel in a sense that it is a story of a woman who rebels against patriarchy and the rigid norms of society.

I’ve always thought that “Carmilla” had this delicious understatement, where the story intrigues and teases, but doesn’t tell too much, and “Hungerstone” pretty much follows its predecessor: we still don’t know much about Carmilla, there are only hints that the woman has some supernatural abilities and probably is a vampire. She indulges in pleasures of flesh with Lenore, might or might not have a connection to the strange incidents happening around the town, makes powerful motivational speeches and apparently can fly. But her origins don’t play a big part in this story anyway, as it is focused around this metaphor of a hunger of someone who had been figuratively speaking starved (or starved herself? the difference is substantial in my mind) to death conforming to the rules and demands of society most of her life.

It’s a different sort of hunger, that makes people do crazy things like eating raw animal and human flesh or even consuming wallpaper and parts of a furniture, because that’s what self-realization does to you. This is wonderful, it translates exactly what the lost years of policing oneself in order to seem normal and follow the rules that society feel like, how sometimes we can be too traumatized to make a step in the unknown and just let it go.

Upon realization that she lived a lie and put herself in a cage of her own making, Lenore undergoes an identity crisis, experiencing different stages of grief on the way: from negation and bargaining to anger and acceptance. I think the book manages to convey a powerful message through her voice:

“I am not safe if I obey and reduce and control, just as I am not safe if I rebel and shout in anger”.

Sounds like something I would repeat myself like a mantra every morning in front of the mirror.

However, I couldn’t help but thinking that Lenore and her husband Henry would make a great couple in some other novel. Closer to the end they were well worth each other. It puzzled me that Lenore seemed to blame everyone else but herself, which reduced her agency to zero, when we know she had willingly made a deal with the devil. The life of luxury she led made her complaints seem a bit like a poor rich girl problems. Yes, a girl that is traumatized by the loss of her parents, but we are talking about a particular girl from a particular class and status, and as far as the story is set in a particular setting, it’s hard to ignore it.

Lenore could marry some other dude, not so rich or handsome, but she wanted to have the whole package. Henry was her choice, and making it seem like she had none doesn’t do her justice and diminishes her own role in the hell she was building for herself. The intrusive thoughts about Henry’s exceptional physical features did not help the cause. You wanna fuck him or kill him? You better decide girl.