Review: Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk

Across two different time periods, two women confront fear, loneliness, mortality, and a haunting yearning that will not let them rest. A breakout, genre-blurring novel from one of the most exciting new voices of Latin America’s feminist Gothic.

It is the twilight of Europe’s bloody bacchanals, of murder and feasting without end. In the nineteenth century, a vampire arrives from Europe to the coast of Buenos Aires and, for the second time in her life, watches as villages transform into a cosmopolitan city, one that will soon be ravaged by yellow fever. She must adapt, intermingle with humans, and be discreet.

In present-day Buenos Aires, a woman finds herself at an impasse as she grapples with her mother's terminal illness and her own relationship with motherhood. When she first encounters the vampire in a cemetery, something ignites within the two women—and they cross a threshold from which there’s no turning back.

With echoes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and written in the vein of feminist Gothic writers like Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and Carmen Maria Machado, Thirst plays with the boundaries of genre while exploring the limits of female agency, the consuming power of desire, and the fragile vitality of even the most immortal of creatures.
 

My Review

I want to add that I think I might have enjoyed this book more in Spanish was it was originally written. It would have taken me a little longer to read but I think some of the romance of the language might have been lost in translation. Because I didn't feel that spark between the two women in the end.

Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was okay, I enjoyed the first half the most and had a hard time with the second half as most people have mentioned. I wonder if some of the author's voice was lost in translation. Or if too much was condensed into the last half.

The first half tells the story of a vampire fleeing Europe and arriving in Buenos Aires. There she must be more discreet than she was before and takes to hunting at night. She watches as time transforms the city and how things change when yellow fever arrives.

In the present day, a woman is dealing with her mother's terminal illness. Her mother passes her a key that neither knows much about but it leads her to the city' cemetery, where she encounters a vampire.

Thanks so much to the author and Penguin for this ARC to review.

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