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A review by aztlan
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
challenging
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
5.0
I recieved a copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for providing an honest review. Additionally, I will be briefly discussing some of the body horror elements of the narrative, so please be aware when reading.
When I finished reading Andrew Joseph White's debut, Hell Followed With Us, I simply knew that I would be jumping onto reading his next release as soon as I possibly could. In fact, I made a Netgalley account just to read it before September because I couldn’t wait to read it.
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth was once again, a love letter to trans and autistic people who are forced to fight to make a space for them to live and to thrive in a world that often tries to destroy us. I cannot speak to the autistic representation in this book, as I’m not autistic, but I do want to speak about the trans aspect of Silas’s identity.
The trans experience that White tells in Silas’s voice spoke to me so hard, because it’s my own experience. Like Silas, my body is not one that can easily be mistaken for anything other than AFAB. Even so, his dysphoria is not wholly about his body, it’s about how society perceives his body. It was a different transmasc story to what I usually see, and it filled my soul. I wrote down so many quotes related to Silas’s trans identity, even a whole paragraph that just explained my experience at one point.
I am not usually someone who enjoys gory horror, it’s just not my style. But something about the brutality of this book, the clinical blood and meat combined with the horrific treatment imposed on the women (and Silas) in the narrative is cathartic. It’s healing. As White says in his foreword, sometimes survival hurts, and hearing that narrative told soothes a wound that should never have been dealt.
Intersection with my own identity aside, Andrew Joseph White told a masterful story that kept me engaged the whole time, managing to shock me with things that had been lead with at the very beginning of the book. I never knew what to expect next, and the ending of the novel was a wonderful conclusion to the book, and I felt perfectly suited to reflect the long-term impact these experiences would have had on the characters.
With The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, Andrew Joseph White has confirmed his position as my favourite author, and I will be throwing money at his next release at high speed.
When I finished reading Andrew Joseph White's debut, Hell Followed With Us, I simply knew that I would be jumping onto reading his next release as soon as I possibly could. In fact, I made a Netgalley account just to read it before September because I couldn’t wait to read it.
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth was once again, a love letter to trans and autistic people who are forced to fight to make a space for them to live and to thrive in a world that often tries to destroy us. I cannot speak to the autistic representation in this book, as I’m not autistic, but I do want to speak about the trans aspect of Silas’s identity.
The trans experience that White tells in Silas’s voice spoke to me so hard, because it’s my own experience. Like Silas, my body is not one that can easily be mistaken for anything other than AFAB. Even so, his dysphoria is not wholly about his body, it’s about how society perceives his body. It was a different transmasc story to what I usually see, and it filled my soul. I wrote down so many quotes related to Silas’s trans identity, even a whole paragraph that just explained my experience at one point.
I am not usually someone who enjoys gory horror, it’s just not my style. But something about the brutality of this book, the clinical blood and meat combined with the horrific treatment imposed on the women (and Silas) in the narrative is cathartic. It’s healing. As White says in his foreword, sometimes survival hurts, and hearing that narrative told soothes a wound that should never have been dealt.
Intersection with my own identity aside, Andrew Joseph White told a masterful story that kept me engaged the whole time, managing to shock me with things that had been lead with at the very beginning of the book. I never knew what to expect next, and the ending of the novel was a wonderful conclusion to the book, and I felt perfectly suited to reflect the long-term impact these experiences would have had on the characters.
With The Spirit Bares Its Teeth, Andrew Joseph White has confirmed his position as my favourite author, and I will be throwing money at his next release at high speed.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Deadnaming, Death, Gore, Misogyny, Transphobia, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Sexual assault and Sexual violence