Synopsis:
What really happened to Cabrina Brite?
Ivory’s life changes irrevocably when she discovers the body of Cabrina Brite on the sands of Cape Morning, along with a mysterious poem. How did she die, and why does it seem she was trying to swim to Ghost Cat Island, the center of so many local mysteries?
Desperate to uncover the answers surrounding Cabrina’s death, and haunted by her discovery, Ivory begins to see the pale ghost of Cabrina, only to shake it off as a mere hallucination. But Ivory is not alone. Cabrina’s closest friends have also seen a similar apparition, and as they toy with occult possibilities, they begin to unravel the truth behind Cabrina’s death.
Because Cape Morning isn’t a ghost town, but a town filled with ghosts, and Ivory is about to discover just what happens when you let one in.
Review:
All the Hearts You Eat opens like a riff on Twin Peaks, with a girl’s body found on the beach of a small resort town, a mysterious poem/suicide note, and an ever-expanding web of connections to the troubled victim.
A little further in, it feels like we’re reading Fire Walk With Me as if directed by Jean Rollin.
But, finally, the real touchstone is none of these, but rather the work of Hayao Miyazaki. Like Miyazaki’s best work, Piper’s novel spins mythology out of the salt air, never once feeling the need to explain, building a story whose world operates by its own slanted logic and illogic. Also like Miyazaki, there is a profound sense of sadness at the heart of All the Hearts You Eat that is never quite covered over by the larger-than-life plot events, or the young protagonists’ best intentions.
Ivory is a barista in Cape Morning, and she is also a deeply traumatized woman. When she sees the body of Cabrina Brite, another trans woman, there is a profound sense of identification, and Ivory sets out to discover the true story of Cabrina’s death.
Or maybe the connection is less profound than she thinks. Just as in the aforementioned Twin Peaks, the portrait of Cabrina that emerges is really just a variety of projections by the people around her. The question quickly shifts from “What happened to Cabrina Brite?” to “Who was Cabrina Brite?”
There’s a novel’s worth of ideas in this set up, but there are also ghosts, vampires, and maybe the end of the world.
Piper’s vampires are all but unrecognizable, save for the blood drinking, but they are chilling, as is the surreal cosmic doorway into Cape Shadow, the underground inverse of Cape Morning. Soon, Ivory is caught up in the vampire’s machinations, and things get very bloody.
All the Hearts You Eat gleefully resist summary, riding a tidal wave of bad vibes, bloody violence, and existential horror, occasionally plunging the reader beneath the surface, where the dark things wait.
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