Baby Teeth
Zoje Stage
Rating: A
Meet Suzette. She loves her daughter, really, but after years of expulsions and strained home schooling, her precarious health and sanity are weakening day by day. As Hanna’s tricks become increasingly sophisticated, and Suzette’s husband remains blind to the failing family dynamics, Suzette starts to fear that there’s something seriously wrong, and that maybe home isn’t the best place for their baby girl after all…more
May was a brutal month for me in terms of book reading, literally my worst in probably three years. I spent the majority of my time away from work writing my second novel, so I only got to read a single book. Now, if this one book was just an average book or even less, I would have felt awfully conflicted making it my book of the month. However, Baby Teeth, the debut horror novel by Zoje Stage, just so happened to be one of the very best books I’ve read in the past two years.
Baby Teeth had been on my tbr list since early last year and on my shelf since Christmas when my wife Charlotte got me the hard cover as a gift. Expectations were awfully high after seeing consistent high praise amongst my Instagram community of readers and writers, but Stage’s searing black comedy horror novel surpassed them all.
From the very first chapter, told in first person with wicked humor through the eyes of seven-year old Hanna with a clear axe to grind with her mother Suzette, I knew I was going to love this book. Baby Teeth alternates between the viewpoints of mother and daughter as they wage a bitter war of wills against one another, and both characters, including that of disillusioned father, Alex, are all rich, complex and vivid.
Stage works at a brisk pace in lean, concise chapters that
move the plot forward with teeth-gritting suspense, interspersed with humor so
dark that I constantly found my jaw hanging down in luxurious disbelief. I
think her greatest feat is in truly creating a scenario in which it’s unclear
who the protagonist is and who the antagonist is. Each character has legitimate
motive and understandable feelings, but also wholly condemnable actions. Baby
Teeth is a book that I highly recommend to anyone who
loves reading, not just horror fans. This is a rare book for me that I know
with complete certainty that I will re-read, again and again. I cannot wait to
see what Zoje Stage brings us next.
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