Milkteeth by Caitlin Starling
I never thought my day job would overlap with my side project of writing and reviewing horror, but when Caitlin Starling posted to Instagram that in honor of World Breastfeeding Week they were announcing the release of Milkteeth, their new horror novel that asks, “What if vampires breastfed?” I had to reach out. “I’m a lactation consultant, and I review horror novels. Can I please get an advance copy?” And here we are.
As a Horror Reviewer
I don’t say this often, but Milkteeth is a wholly original take on a classic vampire mythos while still feeling true to the source material: vampire lore on the whole.
The world Milkteeth takes place in is essentially our own. The city is unnamed, but it has Wi-Fi, service elevators, limousines, and all that jazz. Vampires are vaguely magical–even the main characters are unclear how the whole process really works–but they can charm people, be bound with silver, and (most importantly) are not real. The only human we spend any time with has read Dracula. We don’t know how many vampires are in the city, but they are very aware of the fact that their continued existence relies on the fact that nobody, especially the police, really believes in vampires.
In her posts about the book, Starling implies that the fundamental question of this novel is: What if breastfeeding vampires? To me, a more apt description of the hook would be: what if turning into a vampire took years? In many popular stories, the process of turning from a human into a vampire takes hours or days. Starling makes a single change to the vampire lore, and in doing so, changes everything.
The Main Event
Beatrice is a Broodmother, a vampire charged with allowing newly turned vampire spawn to drink from her for the years it takes their bodies to fully transform. They don’t necessarily drink from her breast, just wherever is most convenient to latch onto.
In this world, new vampires (whom Beatrice refers to affectionately as her nurslings) can only drink vampire blood. Human blood or flesh will turn them into monstrous ghouls. And since everybody knows vampires don’t really exist, it wouldn’t do to have monstrous ghouls running around, now would it?
The main story is being told to us by Beatrice, so regardless of what happens, the reader knows she survives. What the reader doesn’t know is who “we” are. But we know that Beatrice loves us and takes care of us. We know this is true because she tells us so several times.
There is nothing particularly special about being a broodmother in terms of vampire physiology. Any vampire could nurse their spawn, but why would you if there is someone in the basement under the office building you own who can take care of the infant vampires and then return them when they’re ready? We don’t know how many nurslings Beatrice has raised or how long she’s been doing this besides “decades”.
The Details
One thing I particularly like about the vampire culture here is that we don’t get too bogged down in politics. The city is run by Beatrice’s boss, Manon, in what sounds like a crime-boss type situation. While there must be others vying for her spot, that’s not what this story is about. This story is about one vampire and her charges. It takes a while before the actual story gets going; Starling spends a good deal of the book setting the tone and building the world.
Without giving too much away, the gist is that Beatrice has been doing pretty well keeping up with her two charges, but what’s a broodmother to do when there is a vampire-emergency and she suddenly has three to take care of? She seeks outside help and finds a lactation support group, of course. I would say that you can imagine where it goes from there, but honestly, I’d be surprised. It’s a doozy.
As a Lactation Consultant
As I alluded to earlier, my day job is in lactation support and infant care, so I’m pretty well qualified to talk about this sort of thing. The medical side of things is pretty accurate, in a horror novel kind of way. We don’t get too in the weeds on the biology of lactation, because for Beatrice that’s not what’s actually happening, but the emotional aspects are the same.
This is one of those books where the author makes no bones about the fact that the subtext is the text. She is writing a book where breastfeeding is a direct allegory for vampirism. And… kind of, yeah. Human milk is made of human blood. Before the advent of formula, which was not that long ago, infants would die without it. Wealthy people hiring women to nurse their babies was a whole industry (and still is, but to a much smaller degree). The real world is not that different from the world of Milkteeth, except for the vampires and ghouls.
All told, this really makes me want to read more of Starling’s work and I’m looking forward to delving into her back-catalog. 5 stars!