Bones and All

The protagonist of Bones and All, sixteen-year-old Maren Yearly, is described as wanting “to be someone people admire and respect.” The catch is that Maren, since almost birth, eats people. (Eats them partly, or “bones and all”? It’s never really clear, and needs to be, seeing as bones are rather difficult to eat.) Maren and her mother leave whatever town they’re living in whenever Maren eats someone, or as she calls it, does “the bad thing.” One day, Maren awakes to find her mother has left and decides to track down her long-lost father. A coming-of-age cannibal story? Juicy and original. Unfortunately, Bones and All is unevenly paced, with some glaring plot holes; for example, there are no police run-ins throughout the book, despite alarming body totals. It seems fishy that in 2015 Maren’s careless ways wouldn’t draw suspicion. Though Maren—who isn’t really a fully developed character as much as she is a sequence of actions—embraces her vice come book’s end, it’s glaringly apparent that she doesn’t care about being “someone people admire and respect.” I enjoyed the ride, and Camille DeAngelis writes wonderfully, but Bones and All’s plot feels a bit like a patchwork quilt, and Maren’s ever-changing motivations were too disorienting to sympathize with her for long.