I’ve been putting off writing and posting a review of V.E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil for a couple of reasons. First, at least two of my bookish friends are reading this book. Second, I have mixed feelings about the novel. There are enough elements that I enjoyed—and Schwab’s prose is excellent—that I rate this book fairly high, but there is one big piece of the novel that continues to baffle me.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil follows two characters who appear to be polar opposites. Born in the early 1500s, María dreams of escaping her village for the wider world. She uses everything she has to climb the ladder of status and wealth, only to discover that what she wants more than material comfort is her own power. Centuries later and a continent away, Alice lurks her way through life. She wants connection and love, but can never seem to shake near crippling self-doubt to talk to people. The game-changer for both women is the same: a vampire appears and changes everything.
The vampire who transforms María never gets a chance to show her what it means to be a near immortal killer. I don’t know if the original Sabine (María takes her name) would’ve been able to temper María’s insatiable violence. Decades later, María-Sabine finds others of her kind who teach her what she’s capable of her. Only one of these mentors tells her that every vampire will someday lose ever vestige of human empathy and that they must guard against this, lest they become so monstrous that they blow their cover and people show up with torches and pitchforks. Alice is similarly left hanging by Lottie, the vampire who took her home the night she was changed into a vampire. Where Sabine begins crisscrossing Europe, Alice’s response to becoming a vampire is to track down Lottie and hope against hope that there might be a way to reverse her transformation.
For much of the book, Alice doesn’t know Sabine exists, though there are clues that they are somehow connected. I was fascinated with Sabine’s travels and Schwab’s unique spin on vampirism. Alice was harder for me to empathize with at first. A large part of my issue with Alice was that Schwab kept cutting away from her present to share scenes from her past, in Scotland, when she was a child caught between her angry sister and her sad stepmother. I still have no idea why these flashbacks are included. They are far too extensive for the simple job of giving Alice a backstory. Alice’s present is far more interesting than her past. I loved meeting the other vampires of Boston and the hints of others with preternatural abilities. The other part of my dissatisfaction with Alice is that Sabine is always the most interesting character. Even as she loses more and more of her humanity, she’s still the most interesting character in the book.
I’m curious to know if other readers had the same confusion I did over Alice’s memories. If anyone can explain them, I’d love to hear from you. As it stands, I think I can recommend this book with the same advice I give for people interested in reading Moby-Dick: this book is way more exciting if you skip the irrelevant and slow parts.