44 pages • 1 hour read
Sunyi DeanThe Book Eaters
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Act 1: Dusk”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Devon by Day: Present Day”
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use.
Devon Fairweather walks through a convenience store looking for alcohol, books to eat, and eczema cream for her son, Cai Devonson. The clerk asks her for ID, which she doesn’t have, so she leaves with nothing. As she walks through the city, she focuses on making herself appear like a normal human woman. At home, she worries about, yet also fears, her starving son. An expected visitor arrives: a kind vicar who thinks he’s coming to speak with a depressed boy. Instead, Devon feeds the vicar to her son. She drinks to drown out the vicar’s screams.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “A Princess of the Magic Line: Twenty-Two Years Ago”
At eight years old, Devon lives with her book-eater family at an isolated Yorkshire estate. One day, a human man arrives, the first she has ever encountered. Devon surprises him and learns that he’s a journalist named Amarinder “Mani” Patel. She’s fascinated by the idea that he can write because book eaters are incapable of writing. She leads him to her home to introduce him to her uncle Aike. Aike, normally jovial, is hostile toward the stranger and sends Devon away. She goes to their family library to find something to eat, settling on Jane Eyre. She feels the urge to read the book, something that her family considers “shameful.” Later, when she goes to check on Mani, her uncle tells her that he’s been sent away to the Ravenscar family.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “Devon by Night: Present Day”
Devon wakes from a nightmare of falling into hell. She throws up last night’s whiskey, reflecting that alcohol is the only human food she can comfortably consume. She receives a text from a stranger named Chris, who may have information on the missing Ravenscar family. Devon needs to find them because they produce a drug called Redemption, which can curb Cai’s mind-eating appetite and allow him to subsist on books like she does. However, the Ravenscar family fell apart due to a family rupture and disappeared.
Devon goes to collect the braindead priest, who is alive but without any mental faculties. She brings him to a center for unhoused people. As she returns home, two men begin following her: They are mind eaters like Cai who are referred to as “dragons.” She arrives home and comforts Cai, explaining that they’ll have to leave and move on. Cai begins watching a TV show, and Devon recognizes the vicar’s mannerisms in him.
Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary: “A Knight’s Tale: Seventeen Years Ago”
The six book-eater families are abuzz with rumors of fertility treatments that could save their straggling race. Devon, who is 12, discusses them with her brother, Ramsey. Devon knows that if book-eater babies can be born in test tubes, the families won’t need to coerce their few women into reproductive arranged marriages. None of the book-eater children know who gave birth to them because the women are shuffled from house to house in a series of pregnancies.
A woman arrives at the manor for her wedding. Devon is fascinated by the glamorous woman, while Ramsey is more interested in the knights and “dragons” accompanying her. Aike introduces the woman as Faerdre, who meets her new husband, Imber, for the first time. While the wedding party is going on, Devon convinces Ramsey to sneak into a forbidden library to see the dragons. When they arrive, the library is empty. Suddenly, they discover two dragons and run away, crashing into a knight named Kingsey. The knight saves them from the dragon men but admonishes them for their behavior. Kingsey punishes Ramsey by enlisting him as a future knight.
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “The Hazel Eyes of Hester: Present Day”
Devon goes to a pub to meet her contact and is stood up. As she despairs, she’s approached by a woman who introduces herself as Hester. Starved for companionship, Devon befriends the woman as Hester assesses her. Devon suddenly realizes that Hester would be the perfect innocent to feed to Cai. She invites Hester home.
When they arrive, Cai attacks Hester, and Devon locks them in his room. Devon is distraught until she hears them both talking. Entering the room, she sees Cai and Hester sitting companionably, with Cai eating a magazine. Hester announces that she’s a representative of the Ravenscar family.
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “The Princess Bride: Eleven Years Ago”
At 18, Devon prepares for her first wedding. As a rare book-eater woman, Devon believes that she is fortunate and privileged. She considers Ramsey’s new life as a knight and the tension between them. She meets her new husband, Luton, who is cold and dismissive. At their wedding party, Luton’s family has made books and paper look like a human feast for show. Faerdre is in attendance, very drunk. After the ceremony, Devon and Luton go to bed together.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “A Taste of Redemption: Present Day”
Hester reveals that she gave Cai a dose of Redemption, the drug that allows him to live like a normal book eater. Devon explains that she wants to purchase enough Redemption to take care of Cai so that they can run away. Hester counters by saying that she can have the drug if she and Cai come to live with them. Devon refuses to give herself to the power of another noble family. Hester explains that her brother, Killock, is different from his father, but Devon doesn’t believe her.
Cai interjects and reminds Devon that they have no other options. He alludes to some of the memories he’s absorbed from his victims: “I’ve been married fifteen times and signed eight divorce papers. […] I have been four different kinds of religious and not religious at all” (60-61). Devon is overwhelmed and tries to comfort him, reflecting on secrets that she has been keeping about her true intentions.
Part 1 Analysis
This opening section establishes the novel’s structure. Each “act” is labeled with a time of day, figuratively detailing the protagonist’s journey across the novel. The first chapter begins in medias res, or in the midst of the action, leaving exposition and backstory for Chapter 2. In Chapter 1, the protagonist, Devon, is notably only introduced by her first name since her identity in the present day is severed from her family. Through her, the novel explores Motherhood and Sacrifice. Devon’s interactions with Cai are intended to come across as human and relatable until the novel introduces its first horror: Devon callously sacrifices the vicar to her son. Though it becomes clear that this is not a pleasant experience for Devon, she does what she must for her loved one.
The following chapters introduce Devon’s quest to reconnect with the Ravenscars and find Redemption, literally and perhaps figuratively. Dean provides context for Devon’s actions and introduces book-eater terminology like “knights” and “dragons.” The novel establishes its driving force—which is sometimes called a “MacGuffin,” a tangible objective that pushes the characters into motion—and its stakes. If Devon doesn’t find what she’s looking for, Cai will remain a murderous monster, and she will remain complicit.
Devon’s search leads to the introduction of its second major character, Hester. Dean foils the past and present-day settings; the isolated Yorkshire manor is juxtaposed against the gritty urban bar and Devon’s dingey apartment. This highlights how far Devon has gone since escaping the limited world of her childhood.
Once Hester enters the story, the first act gathers momentum. Hester presents, in the same breath, both a solution and a complication: Devon’s goal is within reach, but it comes at the cost of returning to the world she left behind, one through which the author explores Patriarchal Oppression. Devon must choose between her own well-being and that of her child. As a mother devoted to her cause, she chooses to prioritize Cai and agrees to follow Hester into her den of monsters.
The first act closes on two important elements: Devon’s path is being tilted in a new direction, and she needs to reassess her strategies as she moves into the next phase. Additionally, the narrative reveals that Devon has been keeping secrets from Cai and that there are more threads at play than initially portrayed.
The threads devoted to Devon’s past introduce her childhood home, its interpersonal culture, and the expectations that her family has for her. They also introduce Mani, a character who will disappear and reappear in Devon’s life much later on. The contrast between Mani’s understanding of the world and hers creates tension and highlights Devon’s family’s otherness.
Chapter 4 introduces Ramsey, the novel’s primary antagonist, and his relationship with Devon. Because they begin as close siblings, their animosity later in life has tragic overtones. Devon becomes responsible for Ramsey’s fall into cruelty and vice, making her partially culpable for the actions he takes toward her and Cai. Each of Devon’s actions and reactions is threaded together across time. The act closes on another major turning point: Devon’s marriage and ascension into womanhood. She leaves both childhood and her childhood home behind, unable to ever return to the innocence she once held.
