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A review by erine
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
1.0
Apparently this is a love it or hate it book. I'm solidly in the hate it camp - the "I really can't think of any reason to enjoy this" camp. I kept reading, waiting for the horror part, waiting for the thriller part. Instead, it was a story about a mentally ill seven-year-old. A story that plays on the fears of parents everywhere while simultaneously categorizing those that need help with mental illness as monsters.
So this disturbed me on several levels. The aforementioned characterization of those with mental illness really bothered me. Unfortunately, Hanna (the child) is never fully described as supernatural. She's initially described as nonverbal and acts out in ways that aren't considered typical. This is difficult for her mother to handle, and Hanna's behavior has escalated beyond the point that standard schools are willing to work with her. She is briefly possessed by a witch, but not in such a way that it really seems like that's what's wrong. Instead of coming across as a supernatural possession, she just seems precocious enough to research witchcraft online and use it as a manipulative tool to scare her mother.
Introducing Hanna's perspective only exacerbates this. With a window into Hanna's mind, it's hard not to be sympathetic to her, despite her tenuous grasp on reality. It's not hard to imagine Suzette, her mother, doing something that might alarm a young child that could spark this existential conflict between mother and daughter. Suzette is dealing with her own medical condition (Crohn's Disease), her own feelings of having an inadequate mother, and the normal (in our society anyway) pressures placed on new moms to be perfect. I kept waiting for the horror/thriller bit to kick in: Hanna is truly reincarnated from this witch, Suzette put the tacks into her own foot and Hanna's perspective is somehow false, Alex is the third party bad guy who plays the two women against each other. But none of this happened. They institutionalize their daughter in an oddly mundane sequence that gives every impression of describing normal parents genuinely trying to help their daughter, an innocuous facility that isn't creepily lobotomizing everyone, and a mentally ill child who truly is in need of professional help. If I'm giving the story the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it's trying to draw attention to and spark conversation about how we treat our mentally ill or the neurodivergent like demons, instead of like people with a treatable disease or manageable condition. But I don't necessarily think that's where this book is coming from.
Then there's the humor part. The part that pokes fun at this mom who thinks that she might have given her daughter too little - or too much - organic food. A mom who sometimes longs for the days when she wasn't responsible for another person. A mom who curses at her daughter, overreacts to small naughtiness, but still wants to do the right thing. Hilarious. There's also some fun with the kindhearted but clueless dad figure. The dad who works all the time and literally has no idea what his daughter is like because he's home so rarely. The "fun" dad as opposed to the disciplinarian mom, the dad who feels he has to choose sides. All this is just so funny.
I admit, it might just hit a little too close to home. *Is* it funny that moms bear the burden of a thousand invisible chores as well as the responsibility for making and raising perfect children? Is it humorous that women everywhere struggle with motherhood, and might struggle specifically if they've given up a career, or if they are dealing with chronic disease, or if they have a child who doesn't present as neurotypical? Is it funny, or is it a horrorshow? Because this book is marketed as a horrorshow, but I see a little too much reality and humor here. There's not enough contrast between the real and the absurd, so it just leaves me questioning if my own reality is rather absurd.
And speaking of the absurd, would the hospital really have let the family go home if it was clear that someone in the family was abusive? (I honestly don't know - I wouldn't be surprised, necessarily, either way) Would the institution have allowed Hanna a completely unsupervised phone call without giving the parents a heads-up? (Again, I don't know, but this seems very dubious given the known structure of this institution) Would Suzette and Alex have put Hanna through a barrage of medical tests, but never had her undergo any kind of psychiatric evaluation or therapy?
In the end, both Hanna's and Suzette's perspectives read as unreliable, but were never actually revealed as such. The author plays - hard - with many of the typical parenting fears, and exploits them on behalf of a cunning but nonverbal seven-year-old. I came away from this feeling that mental illness and neurodiversity were more stigmatized than when I started, and that parenting struggles were something to laugh at instead of address. In some ways, this book hit too close to home, so my response is doubtless colored by that. But this book also suffered from lack of a clear direction: it's neither horror, nor thriller, nor entirely realistic. This lack of clarity did not allow the book to transcend itself - instead I thought it collapsed in on itself.
So this disturbed me on several levels. The aforementioned characterization of those with mental illness really bothered me. Unfortunately, Hanna (the child) is never fully described as supernatural. She's initially described as nonverbal and acts out in ways that aren't considered typical. This is difficult for her mother to handle, and Hanna's behavior has escalated beyond the point that standard schools are willing to work with her. She is briefly possessed by a witch, but not in such a way that it really seems like that's what's wrong. Instead of coming across as a supernatural possession, she just seems precocious enough to research witchcraft online and use it as a manipulative tool to scare her mother.
Introducing Hanna's perspective only exacerbates this. With a window into Hanna's mind, it's hard not to be sympathetic to her, despite her tenuous grasp on reality. It's not hard to imagine Suzette, her mother, doing something that might alarm a young child that could spark this existential conflict between mother and daughter. Suzette is dealing with her own medical condition (Crohn's Disease), her own feelings of having an inadequate mother, and the normal (in our society anyway) pressures placed on new moms to be perfect. I kept waiting for the horror/thriller bit to kick in: Hanna is truly reincarnated from this witch, Suzette put the tacks into her own foot and Hanna's perspective is somehow false, Alex is the third party bad guy who plays the two women against each other. But none of this happened. They institutionalize their daughter in an oddly mundane sequence that gives every impression of describing normal parents genuinely trying to help their daughter, an innocuous facility that isn't creepily lobotomizing everyone, and a mentally ill child who truly is in need of professional help. If I'm giving the story the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it's trying to draw attention to and spark conversation about how we treat our mentally ill or the neurodivergent like demons, instead of like people with a treatable disease or manageable condition. But I don't necessarily think that's where this book is coming from.
Then there's the humor part. The part that pokes fun at this mom who thinks that she might have given her daughter too little - or too much - organic food. A mom who sometimes longs for the days when she wasn't responsible for another person. A mom who curses at her daughter, overreacts to small naughtiness, but still wants to do the right thing. Hilarious. There's also some fun with the kindhearted but clueless dad figure. The dad who works all the time and literally has no idea what his daughter is like because he's home so rarely. The "fun" dad as opposed to the disciplinarian mom, the dad who feels he has to choose sides. All this is just so funny.
I admit, it might just hit a little too close to home. *Is* it funny that moms bear the burden of a thousand invisible chores as well as the responsibility for making and raising perfect children? Is it humorous that women everywhere struggle with motherhood, and might struggle specifically if they've given up a career, or if they are dealing with chronic disease, or if they have a child who doesn't present as neurotypical? Is it funny, or is it a horrorshow? Because this book is marketed as a horrorshow, but I see a little too much reality and humor here. There's not enough contrast between the real and the absurd, so it just leaves me questioning if my own reality is rather absurd.
And speaking of the absurd, would the hospital really have let the family go home if it was clear that someone in the family was abusive? (I honestly don't know - I wouldn't be surprised, necessarily, either way) Would the institution have allowed Hanna a completely unsupervised phone call without giving the parents a heads-up? (Again, I don't know, but this seems very dubious given the known structure of this institution) Would Suzette and Alex have put Hanna through a barrage of medical tests, but never had her undergo any kind of psychiatric evaluation or therapy?
In the end, both Hanna's and Suzette's perspectives read as unreliable, but were never actually revealed as such. The author plays - hard - with many of the typical parenting fears, and exploits them on behalf of a cunning but nonverbal seven-year-old. I came away from this feeling that mental illness and neurodiversity were more stigmatized than when I started, and that parenting struggles were something to laugh at instead of address. In some ways, this book hit too close to home, so my response is doubtless colored by that. But this book also suffered from lack of a clear direction: it's neither horror, nor thriller, nor entirely realistic. This lack of clarity did not allow the book to transcend itself - instead I thought it collapsed in on itself.