When it comes to books, the world can be a simple place: there are good books and there are bad books. You read the good books and you avoid the bad ones. Sometimes, you wish you could unread a good book because it would allow you to read it for the first time again. Sometimes, you wish you could unread a bad book because it was a complete waste of time. I recently read The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean, and it was so bad that I wish I couldn’t only unread it, but also unknow about it. Want to know why? Read on!
The Book Eaters is about Devon Fairweather, who is a book eater. Being a book eater is exactly what it sounds like: instead of reading books and eating normal food, she has to eat books for sustenance. The number of book eaters is dwindling, so Devon is forced to marry and procreate twice, leaving her children behind every time. The second time, her son turns out to be a mind eater (again, that’s exactly what it sounds like: he eats people’s brains for dinner) and those are killed so she decides to take him with her and live in normal people’s towns and make sure he lives but then she decides to go against the entire book eater community and has to come with a plan in order to save her child and stay with the woman she loves and live happily ever after but in doing so she also has to fight her brother but still she does it. And so on.
Writing this so-called summary made me snigger, roll my eyes, and shake my head. Nothing about this book makes sense. Why are there book-eating people? Why can’t they have children? Why are there mind-eating people as well? Why are there six families? Why can’t they write? What on earth is going on here? Well, the author explains, there is a Collector who created them. Right. And what about this Collector? No explanation is given. And that’s the problem with this book: things, many things, just happen, happen all the time, but nobody quite knows why.
It sounded fun, I thought, a book about people who eat books instead of reading them. It sounded like, I thought, something I could have written when I was twelve years old. Book eaters! Adventure! Action! A hidden society in England! Magic! Cool! But here’s what’s wrong with Dean’s novel: it isn’t meant as a children’s book. All the exclamation marks, which mirror her writing style, make it sound like everything that happens is very important. However, because everything happens at the same time, it felt like nothing happened at all. I simply stopped caring about Devon; all her family members are named after English cities, by the way – I gave up wondering why.
Oh, speaking of English cities: Dean, according to her website, was born in Texas and grew up in Hong Kong. However, the novel takes place in Great Britain, which happens to be where she lives now. The Book Eaters pretends to be British; there’s descriptions of the surroundings, there’s accents that are supposed to be authentic, and she uses the word trousers instead of pants. However, she also uses Fall for Autumn, which no Britsh person would ever do. I know I’m nitpicking, but it just made me all the more aware of how what a slapdash novel it was.
Oh, there’s one more thing! (The oh-let-me-add-something-which-I-forgot-to-mention-earlier-but-which-is-still-quite-important-so-I-might-as-well-just-add-it bit happens in The Book Eaters all the time, by the way.) Devon is raised as a fairy-tale princess, which makes sense because her diet used to consist solely of fairy tales. But then when she grows up, she still calls herself a princess, and there’s dragons and knights (that’s the mind-eating people and those who take care of them, respectively – why? I don’t know, and please don’t ask because there aren’t any reasons why), and the novel ends at the top of a tower, and then she’s a princess again. Really, there are so many allusions to fairy tales and princesses that it just feels forced.
While reading The Book Eaters, I kept wanting to tear my hair out in frustration. Turns out, the book world is a simple place, and this is a very bad book. I should have avoided it, and I wish I could unread it. It might have been more interesting if I had tried eating this stupid book, instead.
What did you think of The Book Eaters? Have you ever read a book which you thoroughly regretted reading? What did you want to write when you were twelve years old? Please let me know in the comments. Also, don’t forget to follow me for more book-related posts!
The Open Book 