“Disappointment tells us what we truly wanted.”
What is the Book about?
Lenore is the wife of steel magnate Henry, but ten years into their marriage the relationship has soured, and no child has arrived to fill the distance growing between them. Henry’s ambitions take them from London to the Peak District, to the remote, imposing Nethershaw estate, where he plans to host a hunting party. Lenore must work to restore the crumbling house and ready it for Henry’s guests – their future depends on it.
But as the couple travel through the bleak countryside, a shocking carriage accident brings the mysterious Carmilla into Lenore’s life. Carmilla, who is weak and pale during the day but vibrant at night, Carmilla who stirs up something deep within Lenore. And before long, girls from the local villages fall sick, consumed by a terrible hunger . . .
As the day of the hunt draws closer, Lenore begins to unravel, questioning the role she has been playing all these years. Torn between regaining her husband’s affection and the cravings Carmilla has awakened, soon Lenore will uncover a darkness in her household that will place her at terrible risk . . .
Rating
Plot ★★★★★
Characters ★★★★★
Excitement ★★★★★
Atmosphere ★★★★★
Writing Style ★★★★☆
Favourite Character
Lenore
My thoughts while reading it
How hard it is to actually know what we truly crave in this life. Often, it is only through bitter disappointment, that we are forced to be truthful with ourselves and reveal what we have known deep in our hidden places all along. Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone is a cruel, visceral journey toward self-discovery, an interrogation of what our desire is and how we can fill that void. This read feels deeply personal. You can sense the emotional intelligence required to write such a book about finding oneself in the darkest of days, and I don’t even want to know what the author had to endure to articulate this pain so precisely.
Set in 1890s England, Dunn gives us a masterclass in historical fiction that captures the sheer cruelty of the era. The protagonist, Lenore, is the perfect child of her time: a tool for her husband, a mere object used to bolster his social prestige. For me, this was the perfect setting for a journey of self-discovery fueled by a burning sense of female rage.
This transformation begins when Lenore’s husband, Henry, moves them from the bustle of London to the decaying, imposing Nethershaw Manor on the remote British moors. The atmosphere here is quintessential Gothic. Moldering walls, drafty halls and a landscape that feels as isolated as Lenore’s own heart. It is into this cold, crumbling world that the mysterious Carmilla literally crashes after a carriage accident. Her arrival acts as a catalyst for the suppressed hunger inside Lenore herself. Carmilla’s vibrant, selfish and mysterious nature is the beginning of the end for Lenore’s existence as a closed-off, functioning puppet. Through Carmilla, the marionette begins to find the strings of her own hunger and, for the first time, learns how to live it out.
Watching Lenore’s path made me so angry. You sit there desperately watching her stay stuck in these patriarchal structures, but even worse, you see how she’s a prisoner within herself. It is incredibly captivating to see her slowly realize what she truly yearns for. For so long, she had to restrain herself so completely that she didn’t even recognize her own desires. That once-suppressed hunger grows louder and angrier with every page, until finally, by the end, she learns how to satisfy it. What I found so beautiful about this story is that while it is rooted in a woman’s experience, the journey toward self-discovery is profoundly universal. It doesn’t matter what gender you are. The struggle to find out who you actually are beneath the layers of performance and expectation is something anyone can feel. Against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution and the misty Peaks, Dunn really shows how difficult it is to drop a life and a set of manners that you’ve been sold as the only truth since birth. I truly believe we only find ourselves when life breaks us and the shards finally force our eyes open.
The relationship between Lenore and Henry is the dark heart of this book. There is no love celebrated here, instead, we see a clinical, almost mechanical “functional marriage.” Dunn shows us the coldness of this household through small, everyday destructions. They have separate beds, Henry has his own studying room, where Lenore isn’t allowed to. And there is the lack of intimacy because Lenore hasn’t fulfilled her “duty” to conceive. To Henry, Lenore isn’t a human being, she’s a defective machine. He reinforces this by constantly reminding her of her place, instilling the idea that a woman has no business interfering in the affairs of men, further isolating her from the truth of his world.
Henry is a master of emotional suppression. His constant warning for her not to be hysterical is a weapon used to kill any spark of individuality. He sows seeds of doubt in Lenore’s mind until she (and I, as the reader) start to wonder if she’s just hallucinating the dark things she discovers about him. I actually found it quite moving how Lenore repeatedly tries to believe that these horrors aren’t real. It felt so authentically human, we always try to cling to hope or convince ourselves that things aren’t as negative as our imagination suggests. Even by the end, there’s this haunting uncertainty. Did he really commit some of those atrocities or did he just gaslight her so perfectly that her own mind betrayed her? We will never find out.
The side characters really round out this picture of isolation. Cora embodies that superficial, proper friendship of the 19th century (maybe even nowadays). This is most devastating in the scene where Cora finds Lenore after she has physically and mentally collapsed, broken by the gnawing suspicion that Henry and Cora are hiding dark, intimate secrets. As Lenore lies there, raw and vulnerable, Cora doesn’t offer her the clarity she needs. Instead, she cradles her with gentle words that feel like a calculated comfort. It’s an agonizing moment because Lenore (and we as reader) can’t be entirely sure if Cora is being honest or if she is simply lying to protect Lenore’s good opinion of her. It shows how badly we want to believe the lie just to feel a little less heart-wrenching pain.
Carmilla, on the other hand, is the radical, animalistic opposite. She simply takes what she desires. I’ll admit, I felt a literal flush of secondhand embarrassment in the moments where Lenore starts to break the chains of etiquette. Like when she spills food all over herself in a moment of hunger or makes dangerous comments at the dinner table. But that’s exactly what the book wants you to feel. It forces you to ask, how much honesty do we sacrifice just to keep up a nice image that actually protects no one? Carmilla is eerie and unsettling, but maybe you need that kind of ruthlessness to rip a soul like Lenore’s out of its cage.
Especially brilliant is the way Dunn links the Gothic genre to the Industrial Revolution. Henry’s factory is a place where human life is worthless. Here, the perfect entrepreneur reveals himself as a creature that thrives on carnage for capital, literally letting progress happen over dead bodies. These bloody factory scenes give the book a unique industrial grit that goes way beyond the classic gothic haunted castle trope. It’s not just an old building that’s decaying, it is the entire morality of a society rotting away. The Victorian home where Lenore lives is just a pretty facade for this internal decay. They are desperately trying to keep the surface beautiful while the foundation is moldering. A perfect metaphor for Henry and Lenore’s marriage, a structure built on nothing but duty and oppression that can no longer stop the collapse.
I appreciated that Dunn doesn’t use the vampire theme for cheap horror. It’s about hunger as an existential greed. Just like in the original Carmilla, the word vampire is not used. Instead it’s this animalistic, instinctive presence that feels way more threatening than any set of fangs.
As a retelling, Hungerstone captures the essence of Le Fanu’s Carmilla perfectly but adds a modern, psychological weight that, in my opinion, actually surpasses the original. It improves upon the classic’s message and creates an even more potent atmosphere. Carmilla herself is the perfect, unsettling version of the character.
Dunn ensures all the vital plot points translate beautifully: the iconic carriage crash, the mysterious disappearances of Carmilla (we shall see if it’s forever… ;)) and the retelling scene. In the original classic, the ending can feel a bit repetitive, but Dunn uses that repetition here as a brilliant narrative tool. By including the play that Lenore attends, Dunn shows her (and us) that she is living out the exact same story as the one on stage. It is a clever way to integrate the original’s structure, ensuring nothing was forgotten while giving it fresh meaning.
Hungerstone is an atmospheric Gothic masterpiece that breathes new, dark life into the bones of Le Fanu’s original classic. Kat Dunn has managed to take the haunting spirit of Carmilla and ground it in a world that feels much deeper than a simple supernatural story. It is a visceral dissection of self-discovery and the devastating power of female rage.
While the original left us with a sense of dread, Hungerstone leaves us with a sense of transformation. Lenore’s journey is a painful, slow shedding of skin that reminds us that finding yourself usually means burning down everything you thought you were supposed to be. It is a book that leaves you with a deep sense of unease and, in the end, throws that one crucial question at you: What is it you truly hunger for?
Reading Recommendation? ✓
Favourite? ✓
The Reading Stray 