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meha 's review for:
Split Tooth
by Tanya Tagaq
Split Tooth is an experimental form by it's not a stretch: the narrator is unnamed, the story is told in vignettes, snapshots with a sense of movement, almost like the story was built out of the "live" 1-2 second video clips a smartphone can take. It isn't strictly a novel in verse, it's more of a free-form novel that includes poetry, time skips, stream of consciousness- but the narrative arc is easy enough to follow.
The author narrates the audiobook and her performance DRAMATICALLY impacted how beautifully and powerfully the story landed for me. I think if I had read the subject matter covered in my own head, in my own tone of voice, I would have missed so much. It smacks of the power of oral traditions still alive in native cultures and that we can access a smidge through audiobooks-- there is a whole new layer of nuance and meaning in her tone that expanded the world.
Specifically much of the story orbits the experience of being an adolescent in a community wth a lot of violence- in the family relationships and also in the natural world outside. The way a detached tone conveys the power of dissociation as a coping mechanism, and the ordinaryness of this type of harm was quite damning. It recalls Claire Dederer's essay on Lolita in Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma. And the ordinariness complicates the colonial imperative to excise the "bad one"- because they have some type of inherent belongingness.
Highly recommended for if you're ok with the difficult subject matter and themes.
The author narrates the audiobook and her performance DRAMATICALLY impacted how beautifully and powerfully the story landed for me. I think if I had read the subject matter covered in my own head, in my own tone of voice, I would have missed so much. It smacks of the power of oral traditions still alive in native cultures and that we can access a smidge through audiobooks-- there is a whole new layer of nuance and meaning in her tone that expanded the world.
Specifically much of the story orbits the experience of being an adolescent in a community wth a lot of violence- in the family relationships and also in the natural world outside. The way a detached tone conveys the power of dissociation as a coping mechanism, and the ordinaryness of this type of harm was quite damning. It recalls Claire Dederer's essay on Lolita in Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma. And the ordinariness complicates the colonial imperative to excise the "bad one"- because they have some type of inherent belongingness.
Highly recommended for if you're ok with the difficult subject matter and themes.