Milk Teeth

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The novel is full of these astute, powerful, gut-wrenching overviews in which the protagonist cements her alien-ness whilst creating a sense of collaborative, uncomfortable marriage between privilege and consumption. Not to entirely bash the book, in its late Lana Del Rey tendresse, I think the themes of language, voice, and how trapped they are in the body are compelling. Milk Teeth is the transporting, visceral novel that resulted from that time, and hunger/desire/denial are the words that, were you asked to distill its essence into just three, would still accurately capture its main themes. I too have a difficult relationship with my mother, feeling all her pain and trauma, thinking everything is my fault while acknowledging that she also caused me pain. It explores what happens when she is confronted with a relationship and an existence that allows her to unfurl, to be vulnerable, to grow into a space in which it is okay to feel hunger and sate it, okay to have needs and expect those needs to be met.

not to mention the relationship between the protagonist and her boyfriend - this couple has the worst communication skills in the world? A book hasn’t tugged on my heart like this since Open Water - if you’re a fan of Open Water then I can almost guarantee you’ll adore Milk Teeth as well. This is reflected in the language, each sentence feeling like a bevy of sensation without a single word wasted. If you would like to experience Milk Teeth without suffering through all 248 pages of it, you can read my abridged version below. Across its blissfully sprawling passages detailing scenes from different cities, what anchors the novel is its exploration of how hunger, class, desire and gender are interlaced .

Milk Teeth is a story of loneliness, belonging, identity, and overall love - and how we’re deserving of it. There’s a claustrophobia about the narrative effectively conveying her mental state, a self-absorption that accompanies her turmoil uncomfortably portrayed. What Andrews does with Milk Teeth, as she does in Saltwater too, is give us a protagonist who is clearly from a region, the north east, the same region that Andrews herself is from, and make that very real.

An intimate exploration of class, precarity, sex, power and, above all, of the fragility and exuberance of love. In terms of writing style, the author sure outdid herself with metaphors and similes - these just became tedious. Although, one of the people is a arty, angular male named who provided a lot of horn over these pages, but then slowly shape-shifted into a controlling shadow. so honest and hopeful' Financial TimesA girl grows up in the north-east of England amid scarcity, fearing her own desires and feeling undeserving of love. I needed to learn how to look at the woman inside me without flinching, learn how to feed her and care for her, to recognise her as me.the writing is full of sparkly words that don’t really mean anything and the same metaphors are slammed again and again. Whilst the writing can be evocative of strong feelings and quite beautifully descriptive, such is it’s repetition that in this case it becomes increasingly cloying, lessening any empathy you may have for the unarmed woman. The writing was excellent, so descriptive and lyrical - it flowed beautifully and made me want to read everything Andrews has ever written - I can’t believe I haven’t read Saltwater yet.