fin_fin 's review for:

Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq

5.0

challenging dark emotional inspiring sad tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

---

Poetry uses words about magic to ease the world back into something beautiful. The ugliest of crimes becomes the most marvellous of natural phenomena. Tanya Tagaq is a true poet, a painter, even, and a musician. Knowing her music makes reading Split Tooth all the more visceral - interestingly, the poetry parts are the most grounded, as the narrator instead slips around half-truths and repressed memories. Split Tooth is hard, strange, touching, queer in passing, wide and frozen like the steppes, shiny like the Northern Lights which act like the uncorporeal, omnipresent, and yet silent villain.