Bones & All

Bones & All is a 2015 novel by Camille DeAngelis. It is a coming-of-age story with elements of horror. The book tells the story of Maren Yearly, a 16-year-old cannibal who struggles with self-loathing, romance, and other mainstays of coming-of-age stories. DeAngelis uses Maren’s story to examine themes of monstrosity, identity and connection, and the need for understanding.

Bones & All was a popular and well-received, albeit controversial, book and was adapted into a feature film in 2022 starring Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, and Mark Rylance.

This guide refers to the Kindle e-book edition.

Content Warning: Bones & All contains graphic depictions of cannibalism and violence—including the suggestion of violence toward animals. The source text also depicts nonconsensual sexual advances and suicidal ideation.

Plot Summary

The novel begins as teenaged Maren Yearly explains that when she was an infant, she ate her babysitter, Penny Wilson. This led her mother, Janelle, to pack up and move them to another city. There are no further incidents until Maren goes to summer camp at age eight. When she meets a boy named Luke, he takes her to a tent in the woods where he has gathered books and snacks for them. Maren is overwhelmed with hunger and eats Luke. As a child, she calls these acts of cannibalism the “bad thing.”

This cycle repeats itself many times in Maren’s first two years of high school. She frequently accepts invitations to boys’ rooms. When they make sexual advances, she devours them and disposes of their clothing. After Maren kills a boy named Jamie Gash, her mother abandons her. Maren is horrified and heartbroken, but she thinks she deserves to be abandoned.

In a store, she meets an old woman named Mrs. Harmon, who offers to pay Maren and give her a place for the night if she’ll help her with her groceries. On the bus, she sees a man watching her from outside, as if he recognizes her. The man breaks into Mrs. Harmon’s house and eats her after she dies naturally. His name is Sully, and he is an “eater,” like Maren. He shows her a rope he has made from the hair of his victims.

Maren leaves to find Janelle, whom Maren believes will have gone to her parents’ house. Maren is correct, but when she gets there, Maren sees her grandmother—whom she has never met—comforting a sobbing Janelle at the table. Maren can’t make herself interrupt. Instead, she goes to a Walmart, where she shoplifts something to eat. A worker named Andy sees this and confronts her but doesn’t turn her in. Maren encounters a drunken cowboy in his underwear who screams and threatens other customers. A boy in a green jersey tells the cowboy to stop. When the cowboy becomes belligerent, the boy challenges him to meet him outside.

Maren goes to Andy’s car with him when his shift ends. He tries to kiss her, and she asks him to stop. When he persists, she eats him. The boy in green shows up, wearing the cowboy’s hat and dangling the keys to the cowboy’s truck. His name is Lee, and he discloses that he is an eater, like Maren, and that the cowboy was one of his victims. Lee and Maren find the cowboy’s address in his truck and drive to his house to spend the night. The following day, Lee and Maren drive to Virginia to visit Lee’s sister, Kayla. They spend the night in the home of Lee’s recently deceased great aunt and discuss their first kills. In the morning, Lee leaves briefly to give his sister driving lessons. Kayla follows Lee back to their great-aunt’s house, expressing concern about him, but Lee asks her to leave.

While driving to Minnesota to find Maren’s father, Lee gives Maren driving lessons as well. They stop at a carnival in Wisconsin, where Sully finds them as they ride the Ferris wheel. Lee doesn’t trust him, but they go to Sully’s cabin and spend the night. Sully wants Maren to stay with him and be a family.

In Minnesota, Maren looks up the number of Barbara Yearly, her other grandmother. Barbara tells Maren that she and her husband adopted Frank, Maren’s father, when he was six years old. Frank was found at a rest stop after witnesses saw him go into the restroom with a man. He was alone and covered with blood when they found him. The Yearlys adopted Frank after Tom, their three-year-old, died. Barbara says that Frank is at Bridewell, a psychiatric hospital.

That night, Lee tells Maren about his former girlfriend, Rachel. Rachel saw him eat one of his mother’s abusive boyfriends after the boyfriend came home drunk. This caused Rachel to become emotionally unstable, and she is in a psychiatric hospital as well. In the morning, Lee seems embarrassed by his vulnerability the night before, and he is cold to Maren. At the hospital, she tells him to leave, and they separate.

After a doctor approves her visit, Maren sees her heavily medicated father, accompanied by an orderly named Travis. Travis gives Maren a notebook that Frank wrote to her for whenever she eventually visited. It reveals that he is an eater and that he killed the man in the rest stop when he was young. The message also reveals that he and Maren’s mother met while working at a camp. One night, when Janelle was eight months pregnant, Frank killed a drunk coworker who insulted Janelle’s body. Janelle stayed with him, but Frank eventually left when they realized his family might not be safe with him.

Travis takes Maren to his house. He is lonely and miserable and implies that he wants Maren to eat him. She refuses and returns to Sully’s cabin. As she waits for Sully, she finds her father’s national park ID, revealing that Sully has known about her father all along. She wakes to find Sully in her room. He reveals that Frank is his son, and Maren is his granddaughter. He tries to kill her, but Maren hits him with a sphinx trophy he took from Mrs. Harmon’s house. She isn’t sure if he dies, but she escapes when he collapses. After meeting with Kayla and telling her she is eventually going to return to Wisconsin, Kayla agrees to give the message to Lee.

Maren hides in a barn for a few weeks in the Kentucky woods. She eventually leaves and goes back to the hospital, where she finds Lee waiting for her. When his truck dies on the road, they hitchhike with a college student named Keri-Ann, who immediately starts flirting with Lee. Lee eventually eats her when she is too antagonistic with Maren. Maren stays in Keri-Ann’s dorm and visits the library most days.

One afternoon, Sully leaves the tail of Mrs. Harmon’s cat in a book that Maren is reading in the library. They fight in the dorm room. Lee enters, saves Maren, and eats Sully. That night, Lee and Maren lie in bed. When he tries to be intimate with her, she warns that he should stop. Lee continues anyway, and she eats him. In the morning, she regrets her decision and wishes she could take it back.

Maren stays on campus for the semester. She gets a job shelving books in the library and takes a room in a house that boards two other women. A man named Jason flirts with her all semester. As the book ends, Maren leads him into a quiet part of the library and removes her shirt. She tells him that she will eat him if he doesn’t leave. The novel ends without depicting what happens after Jason continues his advances.