V. E. Schwab’s ‘Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil’

Are we filled with constant, aching hunger? 

In V. E. Schwab’s newest novel “Bury Our Bones in The Midnight Soil,” three vampiric women go to extremes to satiate their hunger. Released June 10, Schwab explores the lengths people will go to fill not just their stomachs — but the never-ending void in their chests. 

Schwab writes about the lives of immortal women set across a five-century timespan, one from 1532, another in 1827 and the third from 2019. Their lives and stories connect like vines, each with a different need to sate — hunger, love and rage. 

As these women’s lives begin to intersect, their own immortality comes into question. Without a heartbeat, these vampiric women begin to lose themselves — their empathy and kindness — and become caught in the webs of their own hunger, their need to feed a void that can never be filled. 

Sabine guides the reader through her life in 1532 Santo Domingo de la Calzada, Spain. She’s only allowed to be a daughter, then a wife, her life always owned by someone else, until she meets a widow. After spending weeks learning from her apothecary shop, Sabine decides to let the widow take her life, only this death means her freedom. Sabine exchanges her heartbeat for two sharp teeth, begging for blood. 

In 1827 Sabine’s path crosses with Charlotte, a woman from the U.K. countryside seeking a suitor in the bustling city of London. After being sent away for being caught kissing another woman in their mother’s garden, a cavernous longing comes from Charlotte’s passages, desperate to love and be loved. 

Centuries later in 2019, Charlotte runs into Alice at a college party in Boston. The two instantly entangle and end up in Alice’s dorm. The next morning, Charlotte leaves with more than just her clothes — she leaves with Alice’s life. Alice wakes up with no air in her lungs or heartbeat in her chest, the only thing she feels is rage — and hunger. 

The novel is a dissection of queerness. The women are allowed to be themselves, unconfined by their sexuality. Sabine descends into villainy, a trajectory not often reserved for queer people — lest the author be accused of equating queerness to villainy. Charlotte spends centuries yearning — a feeling queer people are no stranger to. By the end, Alice uses her rage to rid herself of the boundaries Sabine and Charlotte placed on her. 

Schwab’s deceitfully fleshed-out characters are each more unreliable than the next. While the majority of the novel is linear, Schwab uses Alice’s sections to slice across Sabine and Charlotte’s story, however, this decision of plot presentation is off kilter to the novel itself, leaving no tension between the reader and no anticipation of what’s to come. 

Sabine’s slow build-up villainy contrasts with a carnivorous lack of development for Charlotte and Alice. Had Charlotte and Maria’s sections been switched in arrangement, the non-linear timeline would allow more intrigue to the plot and greater emotional tension between the characters. Schwab should have switched Charlotte and Sabine’s sections creating a non linear timeline creating necessary emotional tension between all three characters. Despite being complex characters, the trio of women remain stationary by the end of the novel. 

Schwab’s writing style is filled with lush, flowery prose. The writing lends itself well to create thorough atmospheric paragraphs, but it quickly becomes repetitive. Chapters began with the same formulaic sentence structure, a routine dance of sluggish one-liners evidently written to be quoted on social media. 

Schwab’s novel doesn’t neatly fit into one genre, whether it be horror, fantasy or literary fiction — much like queer people themselves. 

Devour the pages of “Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil” available in bookstores.