The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean has been on my TBR list for a very long time. And with us being in the throes of spooky season, it only seemed fitting. It’s speculative fiction that although is described as science fiction, I hesitate to label it as such, and think it’s closer to a low fantasy. The general premise is that there is a class of people who eat books, and retain all the knowledge, and a smaller variation of them eat minds. And I mean both in a literal sense, for the mind eaters think of ant-eater zombies for how they do it. The plot follows Devon and her son Cai, a book eater and a mind eater respectively, as they try to escape other book eaters and find Cai a drug that would allow him to eat books instead. Generally, the novel is fascinating on so many levels, and I adored it, but I have a very high tolerance for gore, and this book does not shy away from it.
The Book Eaters is told non-linearly, which has been making me reflect on time both in fiction and in my own life. The flips between the two in the novel serve to show the reader how our past continually haunts us, showing up in cracks no matter how we brush it aside. In my personal life, I’ve been thinking a lot about the past recently because, as I graduate this year, I am also applying for law school. Everyone is familiar with the pains of writing personal essays — it’s a process we’ve all dealt with when applying to college. But I’m left wheeling, trying to figure out where one part of me begins and another ends. If you’re trying to tell your own story to someone, do you tell it to them all at once in order, or do you pepper it in slowly, breaking time into bite-sized moments? The Book Eaters seem to say that although we are shaped by our past, we are not doomed to complete it and have the final say in who we become in life.
What makes the book confusing, however, is that despite establishing this message about choice and destiny through Devon, it then willingly turns it on its head with her son Cai. Devon rebels against her family and the world she knows because she loves her son and will do anything for him. But because of what Cai is, and how he needs to eat, he has no choice but to live up to his destiny of being “a monster”. By a technical definition, all the book eaters are monsters in that they’re not human, and principally they both devour and destroy things that can never be taken back. It is established that their humanoid species was created, and thus not natural, making them closer to monsters in destiny than man. Cai is born without a choice but to be an obvious monster while his family is able to be one’s just far more covertly. The plot centers around this reality — the mother and son duo trying to fight against his destiny, the results of which I want to leave ambiguous for any potential readers.
I love a morally grey story with characters that leave you thinking about whether or not we can love them with all their flaws, or merely find their adventures titillating. I loved questioning Devon through her journey and reckoning that I could not condemn her nor could I say I supported her entirely. Rather, I came to understand her. I think it’s important that we try to come to understand ourselves in others in a similar fashion. That we are a patchwork of experiences and choices, that we are neither wholly good nor bad, and that our goals can be understandable and admirable but our aims despicable (and that our ends do not always justify our means). But I thought this book was brilliantly written and highly recommend it for a reader looking for something gothic and slightly scary for the Halloween season.
