I'm Just a Teenage Dirtbag, Baby
Women Be Eating, vol. 3
Were you a teenage dirtbag? I think mid-Millennials like me had an interesting cultural experience, where being a dirtbag was very cool. A lot of us wanted to be a bit scummy. I was a little punk child from a respectable home, and I thought the coolest thing in the world was putting my mattress on the floor sans bed frame. I was very attracted to oily, dirty, trashy looking boys. We’re talking Skeet Ulrich in Scream, Everlast during his House of Pain era, and (deep cut) Joe Loeffler, the bassist for the band Chevelle (bleached hair, zero shirt). And when I tell you that Timothée Chalamet in the adaptation of Bones & All is peak dirtbag hot, I really mean it.
I wish Camille DeAngelis’ Bones & All existed when I was a young teen. It probably would have become my personality. I can see a version of the past where I’m 14.5 years old, listening to Nirvana, trying my hardest to look like Siouxsie Sioux, moodily reading Bones & All on the bus and daydreaming of transgressive adventure.
What I had no understanding of at that time was what it was like to grow up with trauma, to be a marginalized person (child), to be in survival mode, to be without a home, physical and emotional. I had a very good childhood and have a great family, and I never should have played around with being a teenage dirtbag.
Real quick before I get into the book…if you have the Substack app you can participate in the “Chat” function, which is basically like mini message boards for the people you follow on Substack. I’ve been creating topics for each book so folks can read and chat about them, like a book club. So if that sounds fun to you, download the app!
This is an installment of ‘Women Be Eating,’ a mini-series on books that explore the greater relationship between women and consumption in literature. This is a fledgling thought for me, so let’s see where it goes! There are spoilers ahead, so make sure you read the book first if you care about such things.
Bones & All by Camille DeAngelis
A time not long ago in my life, I worked at a sketchy gas station in Upstate NY. This was not a glossy convenience store. This was a shit smeared on the walls of the bathroom, needles in the parking lot, shocked it wasn’t robbed kinda place. But it was also a very important pillar of that neighborhood. It was right next to a factory, and shift workers would come in at all hours for cigarettes, lunch, a treat, etc. I met a lot of interesting people at this place and learned a lot. But two people will never leave my mind: the gravedigger and the hot boy with sad eyes who screamed trouble. Both these people together make up the vibe of Bones & All.
The gravedigger also cleaned up human remains after car crashes, and he told me a lot about what happens to a human body in those situations. Sad eyes was gorgeous, but probably because he looked sad. Listen, I’m not immune. His eyes were beautiful. I looked him up one day, and he was very much on probation.
This combination of brutality, grief, and beauty is threaded throughout Bones & All, but so is immense joy and empowerment…like how I felt when I quit that place.
What’s the book about?
Maren Yearly has turned 16, and as a treat her mother took her out to a nice Italian restaurant, took her to see Titanic in theaters, and then abandoned her. The letter Maren wakes up to reads, “I am your mother and I love you but I can’t do this anymore.” The “this” that Maren’s mother is referring to is the “bad thing.” Maren first did the “bad thing” when she was an infant. She ate her babysitter. Just gobbled her up.
That was the beginning, but it never ended. Maren and her mother moved often, after every instance of Maren swallowing another human, bones and all. Maren’s mother gives up careers, friends, communities, because her daughter keeps eating other children. So she leaves. Maren’s eating becomes a cycle, but like any good cycle it does not exist in a void.
Each time Maren eats, it’s because someone pays her a certain kind of attention. There is a fascination, a deep desire to possess Maren, and, eventually, a sexual attraction (even as small children). Maren’s compulsion is triggered by this, and there is no controlling it despite her deepest desires to have control.
“Eventually I realized something. Whenever you tell yourself, This time it will be different, it’s as good as a promise that it’ll turn out the same as it always has.” (p. 39)
I have a tattoo on my arm, a quote from Ian McEwan’s Atonement. It reads, “In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world.” That’s the internal thought of McEwan’s heroine Briony. The power of storytelling is at the center of that book and of Briony’s coming of age. For Maren, storytelling and stories are equally critical to her coming of age. She researches them, hunts them, consumes them. Maren relies on old fairy tales and folklore to answer questions about herself and the “bad thing.” She reads about trolls, old gods, and monsters who eat humans.
“Something flickered then, in a dark corner of my mind: I knew about things that weren’t meant to be eaten.” (p. 11)
She also reads about grand adventures in her fairy tales, and she follows this example and storytelling impulse when she decides to go after her mother.
Maren packs her worldly possessions, including her favorite books, and hits the road. This takes her on a grand and dangerous journey of self-discovery. She uncovers shocking information about her parents and her grandparents. She learns so much about herself, both painful and liberating. And she meets other eaters. I’m being purposefully vague.
Each time Maren meets an eater, she tries to discern what kind of eater they are. Do they have a moral code? What kind of control can they exercise? Maren believes she is a monster, morally wrong, but her eating is a compulsion. She has no real control, at least not in the beginning. Her probing for moral codes in others is a way for her to understand her own morality.
Maren meets fellow eater Sully in a very eerie and disturbing turn of events, but he quickly wins her over as a fatherly type and offers advice on how to live as an eater. Sully also discusses stories. When they talk about a musician rumored to have sold his soul to the Devil for his talent and success, Maren scoffs and says that there isn’t really a Devil. Sully reminds her of the power of stories, and how it can be freeing for creatures like him and her.
Sully threw back his head and laughed. “I’ll tell you somethin’. Sometime I make a little game of going into bars, orderin’ a round of drinks, and tellin’ ‘em all about me”—he cupped his hand to the side of his mouth, as if whispering on a stage—”only they don’t know it’s me.”… “TH=hat’s how stories start. We tell ‘em about ourselves like they ain’t true, ‘cause that’s the only way anybody’s gonna believe us.” (p. 82-3)
Sully asks her if she’d like to join him in his travels, but she declines. She’s on a mission. As she works her way toward her father, Maren meets more people, normies who are unkind and malicious. But she meets another eater, too: Lee. Lee is closer to her age and struggling to navigate the painful grief that comes with being an eater. These two hurt, confused kids team up and keep each other safe in some highly unsafe situations. They’re homeless, marginalized, vulnerable kids with dark secrets. Lee helps get Maren get to where she needs to go, and Maren helps Lee feel less alone. But they’re not alone. Someone is following them.
Maren does eventually find her mother and then eventually her father, and it’s not what she had hoped for or expected. But through meeting her father and having a bit of a life or death confrontation afterward (trying to be vague), Maren does learn about where she comes from and who she truly is. And she still has Lee…for a while.
Ultimately, Maren does not get the mentor or family she was hoping for, but she learns how to live. She has recognized the evil within her, the “bad thing,” and has learned how to live a life with it. This really does sound like living with trauma.
Something about the end of the book that really warms my heart is that Maren becomes a librarian. Stories saved her as a child and a teen, and they continue to save her and give her stability and comfort as an adult. We cannot discount the power of books and stories to open and free the mind, to comfort and warm the soul.
My thoughts.
Bones & All was a five star read for me. It’s a powerful coming of age experience. I loved the tone, the slower pacing, the messy emotional entanglement. The ending of Bones & All is not happy, but it’s also not unhappy. Maren goes through extreme trials. She faces her trauma head-on, but I’m not sure that she’s successful in fully breaking her cycle of abuse. Afterall, the eating continues her eating (in a very significant way) and accepts isolation as a form of harm reduction. At the same time, she begins to learn how to harness her cravings and compulsions, and most importantly, she forgives herself for who she is.
Throughout the book (and the film), Maren often blames herself for her own abandonment. She refers to herself as a monster, and clearly thinks she does not deserve love. The models she finds in folklore to help her make sense of herself are all monstrous and horrific. It’s very hard for me to not read this as a story about recovering from sexual assault or childhood abuse of some kind.
The “bad thing” keeps happening, adults keep having to cover it up, Maren is made to feel that she is responsible, and she has to find a way for this ugly thing to coexist within her without it defining her or ruining her. And as with all recovery and healing, it’s hard and has ugly moments. That’s why a lot of people struggle on the path to healing.
Maren’s experience is absolutely sexual. After the first incident with her female babysitter, Maren exclusively eats boys who show her a specific kind of attention. Maren thinks of it as them liking her too much, wanting to spend time with her, wanting to be alone with her. When she’s younger, that’s all it is. Young boys being enamored with her and wanting to be close to her. As she ages, boys start to want to possess her.
The natural progression of this is sexual, and Maren’s natural defense is to unhinge her jaw and go to town. She even becomes acquainted with one of her victims through a conversation about spiders who engage in “sexual cannibalism”. These boys assume that they will be doing the consuming. And when you read back to the incident with her babysitter, it is entirely possible that she was abusing Maren as well.
Lee’s eating is also directly tied to abuse. He only eats those who are cruel to others, and his favorite targets are his mother’s abusive boyfriends. While I was purposely vague in the above section, there is a thread of generational trauma and abuse that reveals itself to Maren through her journey, and to Lee as well. It is suggested by Lee that there is also an addictive quality to eating, something that drives the compulsion. When Maren asks him what his first time was like:
“Lee exhaled a long, slow whistle. “I got such a rush. Every time I do it, I get a rush. I knew anyone else would think it was wrong, but I still felt like some weird new kind of superhero.” (p. 146)
In her journey, Maren discovers that she is actually loved and was wanted, but the generational trauma and abuse (the “bad thing”) made it impossible for her family to fulfill those loving roles. This is a real thing that happens to many families, and when one family member is brave enough to face it and confront it like Maren does in Bones & All, it is both liberating and heartbreaking.
This book is technically YA, but I recommend it for adults as well. DeAngelis expertly taps into the things that drive us as humans, which are heightened when we are teens. Our desire to know who we are, to fit in, to love and be loved, and to push back against the constraints around us. DeAngelis makes it easy for readers to feel themselves in Maren’s position. The feeling of being stranded on the side of the road, penniless and homeless. Of being lost physically and emotionally. Of longing for another person.
Bones & All is dark and complex. I tip my hat to DeAngelis for being honest with young adults about the difficulties of life. I have not experienced trauma or homelessness on the same level as Maren does, but as an adult I can read this book and identify with Maren concerning hardships, complicated relationships, and self-forgiveness. It’s a beautiful book.
When comparing Bones & All to my previous ‘Women Be Eating’ titles (A Certain Hunger and To Be Devoured), we see similar themes repeated: control, power, and sex. I suspect this will be the case for most of the books I read for this project. Historically and psychologically, what women eat or don’t eat is a way for us to exert control over our environment. It is common for people who are sexually assaulted to develop eating disorders. And hunger strikes were a main tactic of Suffragettes fighting for control over their own lives. More on all of that as we continue on this journey.
The adaptation.
Even more spoilers for both the book and film ahead!! Seriously, do not read if you don’t want big twists and important plot points ruined for you!!
I was so excited when the trailers for Bones & All (2022, dir. Luca Guadagnino) started popping up on my Instagram feed. I am, of course, the target audience. The trailers felt dangerous and frantic, which seemed very appropriate for this story but different from the pacing of the book. It also featured gorgeous cinematography and an equally gorgeous Timothée Chalamet, as well as hints of a hot and heavy love story. That made me skeptical, but not enough to not go see it. I was in.
The cinematography is stunning, as is the acting, but the film felt so choppy. I think this might be because I read the book first, and so it was impossible for me to take in the film as its own entity (I’m usually a film first person). I was too aware of missing connecting pieces and simplified relationships that it made what I did see on the screen feel disconnected from itself.
I sat in front of a big group of teens who were clearly confused. Half of them thought it was going to be a horror film, the other half thought it was supposed to be a romance. Neither were satisfied. Some folks were talking online about how it made them mad that audiences didn’t seem capable of processing a horrific love story, and that these audiences are unsophisticated. I’m going to push back on that, because I think the problem here was the marketing. People truly did not know which movie they were getting. They thought it would land more heavily on one side or the other, but instead it sits right in the middle.
The pacing is awkward, and the plot jumps around in ways that didn’t feel as stark in the book. Overall, I don’t think the story was adapted well to the medium. But the thing that bothered me the most was that the film does attempt to turn the story into more of a romance between Maren and Lee. That romance is absolutely an element of the book, but in the book it culminates with Lee and Maren sleeping together, a huge step for Maren, and then Maren unconsciously eating Lee. It is implied that Lee allows her to. Maren then forges a life for herself (as a librarian) that she can maintain and be satisfied with, and that’s how the book ends. I think it’s a unique and beautiful ending.
“When he held me everything had melted away, everything dark and ugly and rotten inside of me. Lee had made me pure. He’d let me do it.” (p. 280)
But the book is not fully about the romance between Maren and Lee, it is about Maren discovering who she is, who her family is, and what that means to her life moving forward. She is abandoned by her mother, discovers that her father was also an eater and unloved by his birth and adoptive families and is rotting away in an institution, and she is stalked and attacked by her violent, deranged grandfather (Sully). Lee is her ally and helps her navigate all of this. He keeps her safe. By eating Lee, Maren graduates and is now able to keep herself safe.
The book is about Maren growing up and healing. The film is about a clumsy romance that doesn’t make much sense.
Maren eats Lee in the film as well, but she eats him because he is mortally wounded by Sully in their final showdown. He begs Maren to eat him. I think they could have called an ambulance, but whatever. In the film, Sully is not Maren’s grandfather. He’s just a creepy, dangerous old man stalking her. I really hated this ending, and I hated that change to Sully’s character. I felt it cheapened the complexity that the book offers. It also felt so awkward that the teens sitting behind me started laughing.
So while the film is beautiful aesthetically, and I did enjoy it for the most part, I would not recommend it over the book. If you’re going to read the book AND watch the film, I recommend watching the film first.
Additional Recommendations
I’m keeping this quick because I went on for so long up there. If you’re interested in more kinda/sorta horror romance YA stories, I would suggest picking up The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black, Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake, and Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. None of those books are as complex as Bones & All, but they are good fun!
Next Month
In January I’ll be putting together a list of my favorite books read in 2022! This list will included all different kinds of books from many genres, so not just weird or horror books. Let me know below what your favorite reads of 2022 were! I’d love to add them to my tbr.