Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab

This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada. A young girl grows up wild and wily – her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

This is a story about love.
1827. London. A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow – but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

This is a story about rage.
2019. Boston. College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers…. and revenge.

This is a story about life…
how it ends, and how it starts again.

---

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a novel that was always going to appeal to me.  I’m a sucker (ha!) for tales about vampires and having read and loved several of V. E. Schwab’s previous novels, I’ve been keen to read her latest offering.

The novel alternates between two different points of view initially, with a third character’s perspective introduced later in the novel.  The first POV is that of María who I immediately loved.  We first meet her as a child in 16^th century Spain.  She’s a vibrant and energetic individual and someone who doesn’t follow the rules that are set for her.  Had she been born a boy, her behaviour might have been acceptable, but as a girl she’s just seen as difficult, lacking the sense of propriety and obeisance that’s expected of her.  This doesn’t change as she grows into a young woman, and it comes as no surprise that she’s aspires to a grander life than her local village can offer her. 

Managing to catch the eye of a baron, she believes she’s achieved her goal, only to find herself in a tighter prison than she could have imagined as she’s unable to leave his house and is expected to look attractive, say little, and to bear her husband the sons he craves.  María’s life is changed by an enigmatic woman who leads a very different kind of life – she’s completely independent and controlled by no one, free to come and go as she pleases.  Offered the opportunity of freedom, María doesn’t fully understand what’s at stake, but she sees her chance to escape a life she hates.  Despite some initial difficulties, she never looks back and I loved the scope of the novel as we see her journey through Europe through the centuries. 

The second POV is that of Alice, a very different character.  Set in the present day, she’s originally from Scotland, but is studying at Harvard.  Alice’s sections contain a lot of flashbacks to her childhood, and while it was clear that these were building up to something, I found them a bit tedious – I was always keen to get back to the main narrative.  These flashbacks focus on her family, and in particular, her relationship with her older sister whom she admires above all else, desperate to emulate her.  Now on her own, Alice is desperate to reinvent herself, and yet seems destined to remain one of life’s wallflowers until one night at a party and an unexpected hook up change her life forever.

While I preferred María’s story and couldn’t wait to get back to those sections, I did enjoy the parallels in their tales.  Both María and Alice are turned into vampires with no one to guide them through that transformation or the rules that come with it, and they’re both left to figure it out on their own, albeit for different reasons.  I think that this is easier for María.  She’s not afraid to forge her own path in life, and this is just a new challenge for her to master.  She has an easier time of it than Alice as well.  Living, or perhaps more accurately dying, in the 16^th century, people do go missing or die young, with much less investigation as to the cause.  It’s harder for Alice in the present day, living in a world where anything and everything might be caught on camera and where news spreads quickly. 

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a brilliant and very modern take on the vampire narrative.  I loved the focus on female characters, all of whom are so different to each other, although one thing they do have in common is that they don’t fit society’s norms.  I also liked Schwab’s take on the rules of vampirism, which pay homage to the traditional narratives but with a few little twists to the commonly accepted restrictions.  While this novel comes in at some 550 or so pages, it didn’t feel as long as that, and I devoured it in a weekend.  Recommended if you enjoy a vampire narrative and want something a little different to the common tropes.