Exploring Trans Horror in ‘All the Hearts You Eat’
Author: Hailey Piper
Publication Date: October 15, 2024 by Titan Books
Genres: Horror
Protagonist Gender: Various
All the Hearts You Eat is stunningly good. It’s macabre, poetic, disturbing, and beautiful – a trans horror tour de force. My first experience with Hailey Piper reminds me in many ways of my first encounter with Clive Barker. She has a way with language, a mastery of imagery and theme, that draws you in and demands you read every single word. This is a stunningly good story, but it’s an even better telling, the likes of which I have not encountered in years.
I mentioned trans horror because that’s exactly what lies at the heart (pun intended) of All the Hearts You Eat, but part of what makes it so powerful is how carefully crafted the trans identities and experiences are, and how their place in the world imbues the story with so much meaning. Piper introduces us to four characters who came out in their own ways and at their own time, transitioned differently, and encountered very different reactions from those around them. While there is love and a sense of shared identity here, there’s also fear, longing, hurt, and (oh yes!) anger.
What’s most interesting about the anger is that it’s so often felt on behalf of others, an intense emotional reaction mirroring that of the reader.
The story transitions as well, starting out as a sad tale of death before shifting into a very gothic sort of ghost story, a viscerally unsettling vampire tale, and a surreally beautiful story of monsters and mythology, only to circle right back around to a story of death – the death of lives, friendships, loves, and families. It’s jarring (and I suspect deliberately so), but it’s all connected, part of the theme of the underlying transformation. Everything about this story is, in some way, transformed along the way, including two of my favorite aspects – the transformation of doorways between worlds (I’ll never forget that living room) and the transformation of bodies (you’ll never think of oral sex or green sea glass the same way again) – not to mention our perspective on who or what a monster really is.
One of the most subtle things that Piper does with the narrative comes in the final part of the book, and it’s nothing more than the haunting presence of a pronoun. You’re reading it, wondering if it’s a mistake, a reference to someone off the page, a hint of someone waiting ahead, or (most frightening) a deliberate slipping of gender. It’s one tiny word, repeated over and over, but the power it has over the narrative and your experience is precisely that which it has over lives. Paired with it is the breaking of a character, the removal of their awareness, transforming our anger at someone to anger at the world.
For all that All the Hearts You Eat is a story of trans characters and themes of transformation, and while you can’t remove the trans experience from the story any more than you can remove it from the characters, it’s not just about that. There’s a line near the end that I love for its simplicity:
“You boiled her down to one thing, like that’s all she’s ever been, but Cab has a whole universe inside.”
I think the best way I can sum up the book is this: I questioned some of the transitions along the way, lamenting the loss of some aspects and chafing against the introduction of others, but once I understood why things changed and appreciated that what I thought lost was still very much there, I was blown away by how deftly Piper enlightened my experience, transforming my anger into something more akin to sorrow, while simultaneously strengthening my love and compassion for Cab, Xi, Rex, Ivory, and even Honey.
Rating: 
My sincere thanks to the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
