Camille DeAngelis

A girl who hates herself must have a queer boyfriend who hates himself just as much. The correlation between her cannibalism and her bodily rejection was so depressing. She only eats boys who want to be intimate with her, be that sexually or platonically. I haven't seen the movie yet but her consumption of Lee was so sad and not something that speaks to her self acceptance, at least, not in a positive way. Consuming Lee was the last thing she did as a human, as a person who could love and be loved. Really dark -- when she spends the whole book clinging to her humanity and then is fine with no longer caring, no longer looking for love, no longer wanting to be a human at all. Is that self acceptance? In a way, sure. She can work at a library, loving books, memorizing the call numbers of cannibals and demons, and eating anyone who shows a modicum of community with her. No man is an island, not even cannibals. it felt like such a weird strange ending, for this girl who spends the whole book ruminating on forgiveness, and nature, and trying to understand family to just go Jennifer's Body at the end.… (meer)

Plot:
Maren grows up with her mother. They move around a lot, mostly because every once in a while Maren just can’t resist taking a bite out of somebody. Literally. Her mother does her best to keep her out of trouble and from harming people, but as soon as she’s 16years old, she is gone, leaving Maren nothing but her birth certificate. This gives her the chance to track down her father, so Maren sets off. Along the way she realizes that she is not the only one out there who likes to eat people. One of her people is Lee and the two of them decide to stick togehter for a while.

As is so often the case, I liked Bones & All the novel better than I liked Bones and All the film. This has nothing to do with my own imagination being better than what is put on the screen (I don’t really do visual imagination), and everything with the fact that Bones & All the novel knows what it’s about and follows through with its theme(s).

Read more on my blog: https://kalafudra.com/2023/03/02/bones-all-camille-deangelis/… (meer)