Bones & All (novel)

Bones & All (also known by the title Bones and All) is a coming of age horror novel written by Camille DeAngelis, first published in 2015 and later adapted into a feature-length film by the same title in 2022. The book revolves around Maren, an adolescent female cannibal who tries to make a life for herself in rural America despite her urges to eat human flesh. According to the book's acknowledgements section, DeAngelis had just committed to a vegan diet prior to releasing Bones & All, and the book raises various points about the morality associated with killing other living things for food.

Plot summary
Maren, an adolescent girl, has been a "people-eater" ever since she can remember, her earliest kill being a beloved babysitter. She generally attacks anybody for whom she has affection. As a result, she and her mother live in relative hiding and often move from one location to the next after Maren accidentally kills and eats someone. When her mother abandons her, Maren begins to wonder about tracking down her estranged father, whom she's never met before. Venturing from her home, she briefly befriends an older man named Sully, who happens to also be a "people-eater"; his strange mannerisms and behaviours come across as extremely creepy and perverted, prompting Maren to flee from him. Continuing on her journey, she meets Lee, an adolescent non-conformist and also a "people-eater", although Lee is much friendlier and seems to have more scruples about cannibalism than Sully did.

Maren and Lee spend a long time on the open road, meeting fellow cannibals and staying in multiple places along the way. Maren eventually meets her father, but is horrified to discover that she too is a cannibal, and has no affection or care for her life whatsoever. Maren falls in love with Lee, although they have disagreements about the behaviour of cannibalism itself. While Lee doesn't necessarily enjoy the act but sees it as a necessity, Maren feels empathy for other human beings and doesn't want to hurt them; this causes a schism in her relationship with Lee. Sully, who is revealed to be Maren's grandfather, attacks Maren and is planning on killing and eating her, but Lee intervenes, only to be mortally wounded in the process. As an act of love and devotion, and to please Lee, Maren gives in and eats him, "bones and all", a rite of passage for cannibals like her.

Reception
Publishers Weekly was positive about Bones & All, calling it the "story of a young ghoul's coming of age" and praising its approach to modern issues. Bones & All won the Alex Awards under the category "Top 10 Adult Books That Appeal to Teens". The Montclarion was more critical, with reviewer Anna Mccabe saying of Bones & All, "Maren’s character is not easy to love, after being emotionally neglected her entire life by her mother and abandoned by her father before birth, her decision-making skills are not her strongest suit, making it very frustrating to support her... Maybe too many years of unsupervised access to the internet as a child has rotten [sic] my perception of horror, but the scariest thing about this book was the constant eating of beans straight out of the can." Mccabe later in her review stated, however, that she enjoyed the book overall.

Some reviewers noted Bones & All for its allegory of veganism and feminism. Our Hen House, an animal rights activism website, gave a positive review of the book, although pointed out that the book makes no overt effort to raise awareness of veganism. Time Magazine, while writing on the 2022 film adaptation, noted that the "people-eaters" in the original book versus the film are ghouls with supernatural abilities, and that this makes life alone much more dangerous for Maren since predatory men like Sully are just as powerful as she is, if not more-so. The film does not explain or suggest this, instead portraying the characters as just human cannibals.