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

Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532.
 
London, 1837.
 
Boston, 2019.
 

Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots.
 

One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild.
 

And all of them grow teeth.

Lyrical, reflective, poetically beautiful, not to mention a proudly sapphic and historical take on vampires, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a slow and thoughtful literary fiction and historical novel wearing an exquisite paranormal fantasy gown. Very similar in tone and approach to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, this novel is everything one would expect from V.E. Schwab. Spanning over five hundred years and featuring FMC’s of various backgrounds and stories, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a sprawling and meandering narrative that won’t be for everyone, but is sure to please Schwab fans and classy readers.

The best way I can describe Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is vibrant women growing from the midnight soil, restricted by a society dominated by men and the roles they are slotted into. The novel covers the life stories of three women in three different centuries and how obstacles and circumstances in their lives led them to a future of being immortal. The recollection of their lives is unveiled in chronological order, starting with Maria in 16th century Spain, Charlotte in 19th Century Britain, and finally Alice in modern day Boston. Coming off Schwab’s most recent novel The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Bury Our Bones utilizes the same formula narrating these women’s lives in a deliberately slow, meandering, and often directionless manner while briefly jumping back to the present day. Like Addie LaRue, Bury Our Bones features strong historical fiction elements appropriate to the times portrayed which are the basis for many of the novel’s storylines. There are light fantasy and paranormal elements incorporated due to the vampire premise, but by and large the story is literary fiction full of excellent social commentary and Schwab’s signature lyrical writing style. There is a plot that is mostly contained within the book’s second half, but this is a novel that is all about reflection rather than on story.

While I’m not sure if I would go as far as to call Bury Our Bones a feminist tale, it certainly is one that is female-centered. This novel covers similar territory as Addie LaRue but goes much further with its commentary on the male dominance of society, with the recurring theme of all women being required to have husbands to have any worth and value. Rather than the trendy booktok favorite approach to sticking it to the man, Bury Our Bones sees its FMC’s struggle and fight against their societal restraints through quiet and resilient resolve most notably through a recurring motif around being widowed. The expectation of all women being chosen by men is also connected to the novel’s queer themes, the social media hype for this book being about toxic and broken sapphic vampires is accurate! Schwab masterfully weaves commentary about the subjugation of women and the queer community through history via the lives of Maria and Charlotte in Barcelona and London respectively, contrasting against Alice’s more modern setting. Schwab’s character work is particularly impressive when portraying each of their life goals, hopes, and aspirations that conflict with the cards they are dealt and all three women are distinctly different in personality and ideology, each having various takes on morality and immortal power.

Excellent character work, historical portrayals, and social commentary aside, the other main element to Bury Our Bones is the obvious vampire in the room. While Schwab devotes a healthy amount of time towards the nuances of being born from midnight soil, the vampire premise is almost entirely used as a narrative mechanism for discussions around power, immortality, and the erosion of one’s humanity by the hands of time. Schwab’s go at vampires doesn’t reinvent the well-established lore and concepts, but it certainly is one of the most poetic and pondering takes on the material. There is blood-drinking, murder, and betrayal to be sure, but the emphasis is on the conflicted feelings and thoughts that follow and how each woman’s life is forever changed from everything they once knew. It is important to note however that the vampire and general fantasy elements do not come in until 130 pages into the book and the story is very light on action. This book gets the fantasy classification by default thanks to its vampire premise but it’s definitely not a traditional fantasy novel and certainly NOT a romantasy, as much as many readers would love it to be.

“Humans live short and fragile lives. That is why we either take the ones we love and make them like us, or enjoy their company and let them go. Take them into your bed, if you like, but not your heart, and maybe they’ll get out alive.” She swallows. “Isn’t it lonely?” “It doesn’t have to be. After all, loneliness is just like us,” says Ezra. “It has to be invited in.”

On-brand for Schwab, Bury Our Bones is beautifully written and crafted. Aside from the poignant and sophisticated prose, the novel has an underlying wistful, almost yearning yet grieving tone to it as the women navigate their challenging and sudden shifts in life. Literary readers could easily highlight half the book with Schwab’s wonderful quotes that perfectly match and elevate the somber and quiet material.

Sixty minutes to an hour. Twenty-four hours to a day. These are mortal measurements, for mortal lives. But when you live forever, time is something far less constant. When you are happy, a decade rushes by. When you are sad, a minute crawls. When you are lonely and afraid, time seems to lose all meaning. Blink, and a year is gone. Blink, and it has only been a night. Only, it is not a life at all. It is a prison sentence.

While beautifully written and well-crafted, I had a few qualms with the novel’s pacing and narrative focus. While Schwab’s style is slow and reflective which I usually enjoy, this one was quite slow even for me and I struggled to stay invested with the vampire content in the first half of the book. I attribute most of this to Bury Our Bones’ rather weak and vague hook. While this novel follows the same formula and feels like even more philosophical and grown-up from Addie LaRue’s wandering narrative, this story unfortunately felt even more directionless as it lacked its predecessor’s sense of urgency courtesy of Addie’s Faustian deal and finite contract lengths. While we’re introduced to the three main women relatively early and a good portion of the book is seeing how their stories intersect, the book’s synopsis and early chapters show no signs of what to expect or where the story is going. Now to be sure the character work and individual stories are individually interesting to read and well done, but the bigger picture is foggy for so long that it affects the overall reading experience. The lack of vampire or fantasy content until a fourth way into the book also exacerbates the issue. I can easily see readers who picked up this book for the fantasy and vampire premise DNFing the book before they get there. However, to Schwab’s credit, the stories and details are all important and are tied up well by the novel’s conclusion. Objectively, from an analytical standpoint it works but from a subjective enjoyment standpoint, I can’t help but feel like some minor adjustments could’ve done wonders for the first half of the book.

In addition to the seemingly wayward narrative, the story’s overall emphasis and focus felt misplaced to me. The first half of the story focuses on the early life of Maria and her encounter with an apothecary shop owner and widow Sabine, broken up by Alice’s evening at a college party and memories of her sister Catty in the present. While these stories are compelling, the issue is that they take up over 300 pages of a 544 book. Of the three women, Charlotte has the most fascinating and emotional story, yet her backstory and the bulk of the book’s plot is crammed together within 244 pages. It isn’t until Charlotte’s story that some semblance of narrative direction comes together and while the story from that point onward is great, I found myself questioning the use of the 300 pages before it. Maria’s story is interesting and sets the crucial foundation for the rest of the novel to build off, but it felt like it went on far too long and took too many detours compared to the condensed back half and rushed conclusion. I also took issue with how much of Alice’s story and pages are devoted to her memories and relationship with her sister Catty. While interesting in theory, I personally was uninterested in Alice as a whole and even more so with memories of her sister that felt excessive and off-topic. Schwab has a poignant and powerful takeaway message that Alice’s memories with Catty build towards, but it’s at the cost of Alice’s character as well as what little plot there is in the present day. It certainly feels like Schwab had a personal connection to Alice’s story and journey, but the actual content didn’t really feel relevant to the overall scope of the story and if kept as-is, more of Alice’s story was needed compared to Maria and Charlotte since she is at the center of it all. Fortunately although rushed, the conclusion ends on a strong, open-ended and bittersweet note as one would expect from Schwab.

Featuring Schwab’s excellent writing and great reflections of women through a paranormal mechanism, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil a beautiful sapphic historical fiction novel that fans of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue will feel right at home with. Thoughtful and lyrical, Bury Our Bones has perhaps the most poetic vibe a vampire novel ever had. While I had some notable nitpicks with the book’s focus and scope, I nonetheless still enjoyed the read overall. Interestingly, I actually found myself enjoying the sapphic character stories and historical fiction elements far more than the vampire element which I would assume isn’t typical for most readers. For those that have never read a V.E. Schwab book before, do note that pacing and style is not for everyone. But for those that have, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil will likely satisfy that “hunger” for another poignantly pitched character story.