Claire Kohda's Woman, Eating employs a first-person narrative voice that creates an intensely intimate and psychologically immersive reading experience. By filtering the entire story through Lydia's direct narration, Kohda transforms what could be a conventional vampire tale into a deeply personal confession that blurs the boundaries between self-reflection and self-justification.

The first-person perspective proves particularly powerful in conveying Lydia's internal experience of vampiric hunger and social alienation. When she describes her desperate attempts to obtain pig's blood or her physical weakness from starvation, readers experience these sensations through her own words, creating an visceral immediacy that would be impossible to achieve through external narration. Her direct voice allows us to feel the gnawing desperation that drives her actions, making her increasingly transgressive behavior feel psychologically inevitable rather than simply monstrous.

Kohda's use of first-person narration becomes especially complex when depicting Lydia's transformation from...