Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

“Alice Moore, eighteen and caught between. Neither particularly short nor tall, hair more ash than blond, fringe growing out after she hacked it short over the summer, so now it falls right into her eyes, which aren’t exactly blue, or green, or gray, but an uncertain mix, like every part of her is undecided, stuck midstride.”

This scene in which Alice considers herself in the mirror represents Alice’s central emotional crisis. She feels she lacks an identity, doesn’t know who she is or where she belongs, stuck in limbo. After she becomes a vampire, she’s forced to wrestle anew with her desires and insecurities, until she better understands who she’s becoming and who she truly wants to be.

“María would chew stems of grass in the field, suck on cherry pits until they were pebbles, lacking any taste, and at night, the plates would be empty, her brothers leaning back in their chairs, content, and she would long for more, wish the satisfaction lingered past the time it took to taste it.”

María’s hunger plays a crucial role in her character development. She’s hungry constantly, unable to sate her appetite. Schwab notes Maria’s unsatiable appetite as a human, hinting at the uncontrollable bloodlust she experiences as a vampire.

“The difference between missing and memory. Because Catty remembers their mum. And Alice doesn’t.”

The loss of their mother when Alice was too young to remember her defines her relationship with her sister. Catty’s emotional motivations stem from her grief for a mother she can’t stand to see replaced, while Alice’s emotional repression stems from her inability to share her grief about not having memories of her mother.

“Sabine. Sabine. Sabine. María finds herself holding the name, like a cube of sugar, on her tongue, in the days between their meetings. Dwelling on how strange and sweet it tastes.”

María has a fixation on names, believing her own name is too plain, pointing to Schwab’s thematic engagement with Hunger for Freedom and Identity Formation. Her description of “tasting” the name foreshadows María’s consumption of both Sabine’s blood and identity later in the novel.

“Either way, it stomps its hooves, warning her away, and so the woman who was once María—how easy, to cast the old name off with that old self—abandons the horse and the stable and the burning house. And Sabine never once looks back.”

This moment illustrates the pivotal turning point in María/Sabine’s character arc, the instance in which she fully turns her back on her past identity as María and becomes Sabine. Sabine’s specification that she never turns around and looks back on her life demonstrates her ethos, her fixation on the present and refusal to face the past.

“Sabine, who has only once been the victim of such an act, and ever after the assailant, now finds herself spectator. Witness to the intimacy of the embrace, the head bent low, the mouth against the curve of skin, the arms that fold, viselike, around the man’s body, the gasping absence of a scream.”

Sabine’s perception of Hector and Renata feeding on the men in the alley in Seville illustrates the strange connection between intimacy and violence throughout the novel. From Sabine’s point of view, it almost appears that Hector and the man are having a romantic moment, but in reality, Hector is killing and feeding on him.

“‘Espina mía,’ he calls her, like a ghost of esposa mía—my wife—the sounds so similar, the weight so different. Ironic, that wife is meant to be a gentler word, and yet on her late husband’s lips it always felt like a rebuke, a sharp tug on a short leash.”

This passage represents a rare moment of reflection upon the past for Sabine who prefers to distance herself from her human life as much as possible. Hector’s language evokes her memories of Andrés and his attempts to control her, hinting at the trauma she still carries. However, she quickly distinguishes between Hector’s softer analogy and Andrés’s supposed romantic moniker, re-rooting herself in the present.

“Rage, at all the Hannahs of the world, convinced the worst thing a girl like Alice can feel is want, and at this particular Hannah, for looking at Alice and seeing a monster, just not the one she thinks. The kind of rage that made Catty take a bat to the bottles in the parking lot. Alice gets it now. Why her sister was always breaking things. Because rage shatters out, not in.”

Schwab’s exploration of 21st century sexism, misogyny, and anti-gay bias emphasizes her thematic interest in The Impact of Societal Constraints on Personal Agency. Alice doesn’t feel safe with her classmate Hannah because of Hannah’s bigoted assumption that Alice’s sexuality makes her a threat. Alice’s rage at the situation marks a turning point in her own emotional awareness and self-understanding.

“Each victim is a kind of courtship. A prelude to pleasure. And she does take pleasure in them all. Again, they play. Again. Again.”

Here, Schwab uses Sabine’s worldview to illustrate The Intersection of Love and Power. Sabine romances her prey before consuming them, weaponizing romantic social norms into her hunting patterns.

“The emptiness in her eyes—Like a house packed up—The tenants already gone.”

Alice’s description of Catty’s eyes in their father’s wedding photos with Eloise foreshadows the revelation of Catty’s death. Catty is already dead in Alice’s timeline in 2019, and though she’s alive in Alice’s memories, there is hollowness in her eyes.

“Now and then, she wakes to find another little corner of her emptied, some aspect crumbled away in sleep. Perhaps it was a shard of insecurity. A sliver of regret. Sabine probes her mind, trying to find the nature of the absence, like a tongue searching for a missing tooth, but never does. It does not bother her. It is a welcome kind of loss.”

Schwab uses the metaphor of a tongue searching for a missing tooth to convey the nonchalance of Sabine’s posture toward her declining humanity. In contrast to Charlotte, who continually mourns the loss of her human experiences, Sabine feels only relief at the absence of negative emotions like regret or insecurity, nuancing the text’s thematic examination of The Consequences of Immortality, Transformation, and Rebirth. For Sabine, an emotionless existence ensures she doesn’t have to face the pain of her past or the guilt of her present.

“A lovely girl. A perfect mark. Sabine has no way of knowing that this one night will tip the balance of her life. That this one girl will be both the beginning and the end of everything.”

Here, the omniscience of the narrator describing Sabine’s first glimpse of Charlotte makes her importance to Sabine’s arc explicit. Though Sabine is the one who turns Alice into a vampire, Charlotte is the connective tissue that holds the three perspectives of the novel together, the bridge between Sabine and Alice.

“The anger in her does a strange thing then. It hardens. Catty always burned hot. But now, Alice feels herself go cold. Cold enough it hurts her skin, her bones, her throat as she forces the words out, tells him about the party, and the aftermath, the Post-it Note, and the bottomless hole in place of answers, or explanation.”

Alice’s evolving relationship with her anger contributes to her understanding of herself. She learns to recognize herself as separate from Catty, with different emotions and experiences. Just because she and Catty share blood doesn’t make them the same person—a realization that allows Alice to forge her own identity.

“Wildness is like a weed. If it’s not plucked out, it will take over everything. But don’t worry…you’re here now, and we shall set you right.”

Aunt Amelia’s words to Charlotte reiterate Schwab’s use of soil as a symbol for rebirth. Amelia wants to uproot the parts of Charlotte she doesn’t like and recreate her in the image of the gendered societal constraints of the 19th century. Charlotte doesn’t want to be reborn; she likes her life as it is.

“More than once, she glances back, expecting to find her new companion gone, but every time she looks, Sabine is still there, those hazel eyes fixed on Charlotte, until the music swells and the dance carries her away.”

Schwab uses sensory language to convey the intensity of the romantic attraction between Sabine and Charlotte. Charlotte’s hyperawareness of “those hazel eyes,” the swell of the music, and the rhythm of the dance emphasize the pull she feels toward Sabine.

“She is not a lily or a rose. Not a flower ready and waiting to be picked. She is still growing wild at the edges of her family garden. She is not ready. She will never be ready. This isn’t what she wants.”

Like María, Charlotte views marriage as a kind of death, the plucking of the flower that is her life and her freedom. Schwab’s flower metaphor conveys her desperation to assert her own freedom and desires rather than allowing societal constraints to determine her fate. Charlotte chooses to join Sabine and face a different kind of death.

“A soul is an entire thing. All or nothing, there or not. But blood. Blood exists in quantity and by degrees.”

Charlotte’s preoccupation with her victim’s souls links her guilt killing her victims to her lingering humanity. The tension that rises between Sabine and Charlotte illustrates the difference in their worldviews—for Sabine, the whole world is hers to do with as she pleases, while Charlotte still sees herself with humility—a single participant in a collective existence.

“Charlotte often wishes she could feel the contours of her lover’s mind, read the outlines of her ideas, her hopes, her dreams, but Sabine’s thoughts are always guarded, her head is always closed. A matter of age, Sabine says when she asks, but Charlotte swears she is being kept out.”

Sabine’s guarded thoughts act as an early red flag for Charlotte, suggesting an inherent imbalance in their relationship. Charlotte wears her heart on her sleeve, but Sabine holds back, laying the groundwork for the growing emotional inequality between them.

“Not as she arches, offering the column of her throat, and Sabine bites deep, teeth sinking to the bone.”

Schwab emphasizes the rising tension between the two lovers, contrasting Sabine’s initial, gentle bite that turned Charlotte into a vampire with the visceral description of a bite designed only to hurt her. This cruelty marks a turning point in their relationship, and pushes Charlotte to flee.

“Take it from someone who has a few centuries behind them. You learn how heavy some feelings weigh, how much they’ll drag you down. Anger and resentment are the worst. They’re like rocks in your pockets. Too many, and you’ll drown.”

Ezra acts as a guide and mentor in Alice’s early life as a vampire, steering her toward growth and self-acceptance. He advises Alice to both embrace and release her feelings. Alice cannot stifle her rage, nor can she carry it with her eternally. To survive, Alice must face her anger and let it go.

“Because I love you as you are, and I cannot bear to change you. Because I saw the venom in your eyes tonight. I felt the violence in your limbs, the way your passion became rage, and I know that it would bloom like rot inside your heart.”

Here, Charlotte’s internal monologue reflects the trauma she carries from her relationship with Sabine and its impact on her psyche. Charlotte worries that she would become Giada’s Sabine, or that Giada would become a version of Sabine herself, that violence would taint and ruin their relationship.

“She wants Sabine to pay for what she did, wants to hold her down and drive a stake right through her heart, watch the life go out of her eyes and her body turn to dust. She wants Sabine to look at her before she dies, to understand that it’s her fault. That she created her own killer.”

The shift in Alice’s rage from Lottie to Sabine, emphasizes Lottie as the bridge that connects the other two narrative perspectives. Though Lottie callously risked Alice’s life, Alice immediately recognizes that they are both targets of Sabine’s vengeance and violence. Allowing her anger to flow toward Sabine also allows her to embrace her rage rather than attempting to suppress it.

“Death is rot and ruin. Death is bones and dirt. You are a rose that grew out of it.”

Here, Sabine evokes the images of roses and soil—symbols of death and rebirth throughout the novel to frame vampirism as a gift rather than a curse. Her words are intended to empower Alice, who is still grappling with her transformation. Sabine’s belief that she’s unkillable points to the hubris that brings about her demise.