The Bottomless Well of Human Desire

Lenore and Henry are moving up in Victorian society. Henry is nouveau riche, a manufacturer of cutlery, and he's married a high-born but penniless wife. The match means class elevation for Henry and security for Lenore. Oh, there's love, too, at first, but after Lenore miscarries and becomes infertile, the relationship cools. The terrible secret they share doesn't help--and there's worse mayhem ahead, as they soon discover when they rescue the mysterious Carmilla from a carriage crash on the way to their new estate . . . 

Hungerstone (Kat Green, 2025), is a story about desire and agency, which takes Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's lesbian vampire novella Carmilla as inspiration. In both stories, a young woman (Laura in the original, Lenore in Hungerstone) dreams of another woman about her age coming to her at night and biting her. Later, both heroines meet this mysterious figure--Carmilla--in the flesh, rescuing her from a carriage crash. Carmilla insinuates herself into Lenore's life; partly to sate her own desires, but much more importantly to help Lenore understand that she, too, has desires, and that she should be honest with herself and pursue them. Carmilla and Henry do not get along, and Carmilla, in word and deed, does what she can to encourage Lenore to reclaim her agency. It's not just a matter of getting out from under her husband's thumb--it's about survival itself. 

Lenore's backstory is presented via her thoughts as she navigates her new reality. Thanks to Carmilla, Lenore is forced to reflect on her past to discover the reasons why she gave up hope of happiness from a young age, and why she allowed herself to enter an unfulfilling, even dangerous, relationship with Henry. Moreover, without Carmilla's aid, Lenore may not have discovered the forces being drawn up against her until it was too late . . . 

For the fourth time this month, I've read stories by women about women who reclaim their agency to empower themselves and protect themselves from men. Of these, Hungerstone might be my favourite. Rich in allusion and metaphor, the novel first emulates and then inverts Carmilla's original story to present a subversive, well-earned happy ending Le Fanu may have appreciated but could not possibly have depicted in his era. Hungerstone also works as a horror novel; it's gloomy, with a pervasive sense of dread, the occasional outbreak of horrific violence, and some very weird scenes of pica--perhaps unsurprising in a novel about desire, hunger, want, and cravings--all the same thing, are they not? There's even a lovely little scene with a real hunger stone.