I don’t quite remember adding With Teeth by Kristen Arnett to my must-read list, but a couple of weeks ago when I was looking through it and what was available at my local library, it popped up. I bit (pun intended) and gave it a go.
The book mainly follows the perspective of Sammie. It opens with Sammie almost letting her kid get abducted at a local Orlando park. She’s obviously distraught, but this is just the first encounter where we see how disconnected she is from her son, Samson. In her eyes, Samson is an absolute terror. Actually, he kind of seems like he’s got sociopathic tendencies. This is why I picked up this novel, because there’s something about reading about evil children that just confirms why I don’t care for them that much. But, as the story went on it was clear this wasn’t the next Baby Teeth (seriously go read that crazy novel).
Instead, what we got was the unraveling of Sammie’s life. The first chunk of the book explores Sammie’s life with her eleven year old son and her wife, Monika. It seems the two are pretty in love despite not seeing eye to eye on how to raise Samson. Monika gets to be the “dad” of their family, implying that she works and then gets to be the “fun” parent. To me, and maybe to Sammie a little bit, Monika seems detached from their life, and only participates when totally necessary. It didn’t come as much of a surprise to me that when the book fast-forwards about five years that the two are headed for divorce.
All of this change though leaves Sammie in denial. Even regular visits to a therapist seem to amount to any sort of forward movement in Sammie’s life. But her misery is her own making. I can understand wanting to go back to something or some time that seemed so perfect, but when you’re the only one wishing it, it’s kind of pointless. She’s still living in the same house as Monika, but they hardly ever interact. Her relationship with Samson is about the same, too. The only difference now is occasionally we get to hear him say that Sammie puts in no effort with him. Sammie makes half-hearted attempts to move on, but it’s clear she’s still fixated on her old life.
I would liken Sammie to the unreliable narrator only because interspersed throughout the book are little snippets of the same events Sammie just described, but from another character’s perspective. Usually complete strangers! It leads me to believe that Sammie’s head is a little messed up, but I can’t tell if it’s from some childhood trauma or depression. It would make sense that she’s been suffering from post-partem depression, even when her son is a full-grown teen, but she consistently references her strict and un-loving upbringing, so it’s hard to rule that out, too.
Overall, this was an interesting read. Not knowing anything about the book, I was certainly eager to see what was going to happen next. Ultimately though, it left me a little disappointed. It’s clear Sammie still has issues by the end of the novel, but it’s also not clear to me what actually happened during some important instances throughout the book. I would maybe like to see this story retold from another character’s perspective, like Samson. Of course, I imagine his story would be as distorted as his mother’s. As I said, it was an interesting read, and I’m glad I gave it a shot.