With Teeth

Description

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST, VOGUE,  MARIE CLAIRE, READER’S DIGEST, AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

“A gripping read…Unabashedly queer, probing and unafraid…Exceedingly engaging.” –USA Today

“Sublimely weird, fluently paced, brazenly funny and gayer still, and it richly deserves to find readers.” –New York Times

From the author of the New York Times–bestselling sensation Mostly Dead Things: a surprising and moving story of two mothers, one difficult son, and the limitations of marriage, parenthood, and love

If she’s being honest, Sammie Lucas is scared of her son. Working from home in the close quarters of their Florida house, she lives with one wary eye peeled on Samson, a sullen, unknowable boy who resists her every attempt to bond with him. Uncertain in her own feelings about motherhood, she tries her best—driving, cleaning, cooking, prodding him to finish projects for school—while growing increasingly resentful of Monika, her confident but absent wife. As Samson grows from feral toddler to surly teenager, Sammie’s life begins to deteriorate into a mess of unruly behavior, and her struggle to create a picture-perfect queer family unravels. When her son’s hostility finally spills over into physical aggression, Sammie must confront her role in the mess—and the possibility that it will never be clean again.

Blending the warmth and wit of Arnett’s breakout hit, Mostly Dead Things, with a candid take on queer family dynamics, With Teeth is a thought-provoking portrait of the delicate fabric of family—and the many ways it can be torn apart.PRAISE FOR WITH TEETH:

“A beautiful, startling demystification of queer family . . . a portrait of a woman who is, at once, wholly ordinary and not quite like any literary mother who came before.”  —Vogue

“Sublimely weird, fluently paced, brazenly funny.” —New York Times

“[A] gloriously messy, eminently Floridian tale of family dysfunction. . . . Arnett pays brutal, forensic attention to the pain that festers when family members ignore their wounds and those that they inflict on others.”  —The Atlantic

“Arnett is an expert at capturing longing and sadness and passion — specifically how the three tangle together.” —Vulture

“Absolutely captivating and scathingly frank . . . strangely shrewd and tender . . . Arnett is that rare, brave writer willing to articulate the darkest thoughts even the best parents entertain while trudging along through the most challenging job in the world.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Gripping [and] un-put-down-able . . .  a story with a chewy, sinewy bite that will leave you hard-pressed to look away.” —USA Today

“Arnett [is] adept at staging sensuous tragicomedies against the often-freakish backdrop of Florida. . . . Come for the wackiness and wonder of queer family dynamics, stay for the poignant portrait of motherhood on the brink.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“[A] biting and funny take on queer families” —Entertainment Weekly

“Darkly funny yet sobering.” —Elle

“As With Teeth spins through its insightful portrayal of queer parenthood, the struggle for identity and autonomy amidst the disintegration of a marriage, Kristen Arnett keeps us guessing until the final moment.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“An equally humorous and moving portrayal of a mother’s fear of her hostile son while desperately trying to keep her family together.” —Marie Claire

“Arnett has a masterful sense of pacing and a real love for her flawed, unreliable characters. She infuses wit, emotionality, and that specific, saturated Florida essence into the writing, making [With Teeth] compulsively readable.” —Shondaland

“Warm and witty[,] compassionate and unflinching, Arnett’s story of a queer family in crisis illuminates poignant truths about parenthood, aging, and the ties that bind us.” —Esquire

“There is no book I wish had come out sooner . . . Arnett’s sense of humor and celebration of queerness, absurdity, Florida heat and outsidership [feels] like permission to live with more joy and less fear.” —T Kira Madden, Bustle

“Among the more satisfying and accomplished books of the past year. . . . In her much anticipated second novel, Kristen Arnett has managed to wrangle the wilds of love, family, and motherhood to tell an engaging, voluminous story in bright, lucid prose.” —Chicago Review of Books 

“[Arnett] doesn’t just stare into the eyes of her most off-the-wall creations, but sinks her teeth into their lives, reveling in every part of them, tough and tender. In With Teeth — a novel as humid and feral and teeming with life as Florida itself — Arnett is fearless in how far she’s willing to go to show the darkest places we inhabit, as women, mothers, lovers, and people.” —Refinery 29

“You can feel the humidity in the air, the dense, wet stickiness of Florida throughout. . . . Although With Teeth explores the disintegration of a marriage[,] Arnett doesn’t leave us busted and sad. The varied perspectives keep us rooting for everyone.”  —Ploughshares

“Like Mostly Dead Things, Arnett’s second book is darkly comic, and this is [her] real talent; she writes into discomfort until it becomes comedy. With Teeth is an invitation to grab a bottle of cold beer and ride shotgun in a minivan full of self-sabotaging, irresistibly tender characters years before we’ll have enough distance to laugh at those traits in ourselves.” —Leigh Hopkins, Bomb

“Candid, gorgeous, and written in Arnett’s signature style, this is a must-read.” —Real Simple

“Arnett’s depiction of a queer family is complex, funny, and textured, and she renders Sammie’s imperfection with nuance and humanity. This novel will leave readers at the edge of their seats, terrified to discover what terrible mistake Samson—or Sammie—is about to make next but unable to tear their eyes away from the dark, funny, and deeply human mess.” —Seattle Book Review

“Explosive.” —The Inquirer (Philadelphia)

“What happens when the reality of motherhood looks nothing like the Hallmark card one imagined? . . . In Kristen Arnett’s bold novel, Florida mom Sammie Lucas struggles with the challenges of raising a child who grows increasingly more hostile the older he gets.” —Atlanta Journal-Constitution 
 
“A strange, beguiling surprise of a book. . . . . Full of whimsy and emotion, Arnett’s sophomore release completely rips away any delusions you might have had about books that revolve around mothers, wives and weird kids. Her take on queer relationships is clear-eyed, candid and captivating. . . . With Teeth is a revelation of love, regret and the wisdom that comes with letting go.” —Book Reporter

“Embedded with Arnett’s unmistakable brand of humor and permeating with a fresh display of vulnerability, With Teeth is a gift with a heart as big as its author’s.” —Electric Literature

“A deeply felt, deeply uncomfortable, deeply hilarious story . . . It asks questions about parenthood and queer community that will stay circulating around my brain for a long time to come.” —Autostraddle

“Compelling, tense, and will leave you unsettled in the best way possible.” —Alma
 
“Through alternating laughs and audible gasps of horror, readers will come away from Kristen Arnett’s darkly comic story with a new appreciation for the mysteries and puzzling perspectives each person we cross paths with holds inside.” —PopSugar

“[A] deliciously unsettling novel about parenthood and queerness. You’ll be thinking about it for weeks.” —HelloGiggles 

“Fantastic . . . . A hilarious and astute dive into the not-so-fun parts of parenthood. Arnett shows her range with laugh-out-loud scenes and moments of honest sadness. . . . Readers will root for [Sammie] from start to finish.” —Bookpage  

“Complicated, fearless and confidently messy, With Teeth should resonate with any reader who has ever felt like a stranger in their own life.” —Shelf Awareness

“Arnett paints a complex picture of a queer family in this well-sculpted drama. . . . prismlike prose [and] vividly rendered characters.” —Publishers Weekly

“Arnett continues to create needed space for a genre one might call ‘queer unromance.’ . . . This book is equal parts Florida queer and fascinating.” —Booklist

“Arnett writes movingly . . . . [She] deftly examines the psychological dynamics of a family, raising complicated questions about whether mothers can ever truly understand how to raise sons and whether our children, too often, are mirrors of our own worst tendencies.”  —Kirkus Reviews

“With Teeth is a wonderfully sticky novel about motherhood, partnership, sex, and love. Kristen Arnett lets her characters have the run of the place, and it’s delicious fun to watch them do, say, and think things they’ll regret.” —Emma Straub, author of All Adults Here

“A darkly funny, brutally honest story about a woman undone by motherhood. Kristen Arnett grapples with the big questions: Is any child essentially unlovable? What does a happy ending look like? With Teeth digs in deep and doesn’t let go. I truly loved it.” —Jennifer Weiner, bestselling author of Mrs. Everything and That Summer

“From the very wise, very funny Kristen Arnett, With Teeth is as exhilaratingly candid as it is morally complex. Three cheers for this enthralling new book, which affirms my status as a card-carrying, rip-roaring, lifelong admirer of Arnett’s writing.” — R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

“With Teeth took me to a seedy Florida lesbian bar, handed me a flat beer with lipstick on the rim, and told me a story I couldn’t walk away from even if I tried. An exquisitely unsettling, brilliantly layered, darkly funny novel that’ll make you question your own perceptions.” —Casey McQuiston, author of Red, White & Royal Blue

PRAISE FOR KRISTEN ARNETT:

“Arnett deftly animates the sheer weirdness of desire and grief.” ­ —O, The Oprah Magazine
  
“Arnett possesses all the bravery her characters dream of. . . . She writes comic set pieces to make you laugh, sex scenes to turn you on.”  —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
 
“The reflective, inquisitive quality of Arnett’s writing is key to its success. She’s a natural novelist because of her curiosity.”  —Entertainment Weekly
 
“Kristen Arnett is wickedly talented and a wholly original voice.”  —Jami Attenberg
 
“Kristen Arnett is the queen of the Florida no one has ever told you about, and on every page she brings it to steely and vivid life.”  —Alexander CheeKristen Arnett is the author of the New York Times–bestselling novel Mostly Dead Things and the story collection Felt in the Jaw. A queer writer based in Florida, she has written for The New York Times, Guernica, BuzzFeed, McSweeney’s, The Guardian, Salon, and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and a winner of the Ninth Letter Literary Award in Fiction and the Coil Book Award.

The man took her son’s hand and walked casually toward the playground exit.

Sammie had left him on the swing set. He’d just learned to work the swing himself without her pushing, which was a relief, so she let him stay on for a few more minutes while she cleaned up and gathered their things. She’d said,

I’ll be right back

and

Keep pumping your legs, you’re doing great,

and then she’d walked down to the gate that led to the main exit, passing a woman with a double stroller bogged down in diaper bags and a kid so big that their legs hung down either side. It was stiflingly hot outside, even though it was already December, and the woman was huffing and puffing her way through the silty dirt with all that weight. She had on a pink visor with a palm tree and the word Orlando embroidered in cursive script. She was muttering something Sammie couldn’t make out-“Many, many,” it sounded like, or maybe “Money, money.” It sounded like crazy-person gibberish. Sammie hurried past so she wouldn’t end up getting involved.

There was a garbage can near her car, but it was rancid and overflowing already, so she wadded her son’s half-eaten lunch up tight in its paper bag and dropped it onto the front seat. It was so scorching inside the car that she opened all the doors and stood outside for a minute to let the heat roil out, because Samson would start crying if he felt “sticky,” and she was too tired to deal with it. A cloud of gnats circled her head, thirsty for the sweat beading on her neck, and she swatted at them absentmindedly. She picked up her son’s bottle of overheated lemonade from the floor, grimacing at the chunks of backwash before dumping it out on the sun-soft asphalt and tossing it back onto the seat. But it bounced and rolled off onto the floor, and her back hurt too much to pick it up, so she didn’t. Her back hurt because she’d spent the last three months picking up Samson and taking him to the bathroom every night after he wet himself. Four years old and still wetting the bed-but then every child was different, that’s what the doctor said. Sammie wasn’t sure she believed it.

So she left the bottle there and turned back around.

There was the man, walking away with her son.

“Hey,” she said, because no other words would come. “Hey!”

The man and Samson didn’t stop. They didn’t walk any faster, either. Just kept strolling toward the exit on the far side of the playground. Her son was holding the man’s hand as if he’d known him his whole life. The guy was medium height, in his forties maybe, with thinning dark blond hair and a scruff of beard, wearing a gray polo tucked into dark blue jeans. White sneakers. Her son had on khaki shorts and his yellow T-shirt with Ruff and Tumble, the cartoon dalmatians, on the front. His hair was a real cloud of curls from the humidity; it was well past time for a haircut, but Samson had thrown a fit when she tried to take him.

Sammie jumped the fence. She didn’t know she was going to until she did-didn’t even know she even could, really; she wasn’t particularly athletic, and her body was small-but she vaulted it and landed directly on the other side. And then she ran. She kicked up a storm of mulch, and one of her sandals fell off, but she kept going.

“Hey!” she kept yelling, louder and louder, but neither the man nor her son looked back. Her son never listened when she called him, never responded to his name or to her commands. The man had led her son through the gate, and now they were walking through the parking lot, headed toward a big red truck.

She stopped yelling and ran faster.

He opened the passenger door. Samson just stood there beside him. She could see the man’s lips moving, but she couldn’t make out any of the words. Her son, quiet all day every day, looked up at the man and smiled. Actually smiled. Full-on toothy grin.

Sammie started screaming. Not just a scream-a prolonged siren shriek, rising at the end like the wail of an ambulance. Still nothing from the man. Nothing from her son. Could anyone hear her?

When she finally reached them, the man was buckling Samson into the front seat.

She pushed past him and yanked her son out. Then her back, already strained from running, seized up altogether. She crumpled and almost dropped him onto the asphalt, catching him by the arm just in time. She was wheezing. Out of breath. Her foot was bleeding, she saw now, and so was her left thigh from when she’d scratched it hurtling the chain-link.

“You!” she said. Took a breath. Took another breath. “You. My son. You.”

The man put up his hands, as if to ward her off. Ward her off! Unreal. He was about to abscond with her kid in the middle of the afternoon and he was acting like she was the crazy one.

Then again, she probably looked crazy. She felt crazy. He didn’t look scared at all; in fact, he looked concerned. She studied his face, tanned and wrinkled around his deep-set eyes. He looked like the kind of guy who smiled a lot. He looked like someone’s nice neighbor.

“I was just showing him my truck,” he said. “Kid said he liked trucks.”

Samson was yanking at her hand to get away, and she gripped harder.

“Your truck. Your truck?”

“I swear.” The man smiled at her, revealing a line of very large bright teeth. Super white teeth, all even. Maybe not even real teeth. Too perfect for that face, with its crooked nose and scratchy beard and smile wrinkles.

“I am calling the police,” Sammie said. But where was her phone? Back in her car, along with her keys, along with all her stuff.
Where was her other shoe? Halfway across the playground.

“Mom.” Samson tugged her hand again, sweaty fingers wriggling. “It’s got a CB radio.”

She looked down at her kid, and he looked back at her with that same indifferent look he always had. No grin for Mom, even though she’d saved him from imminent danger. No thought at all to how her heart was hammering inside her chest. She could have a heart attack right there in the parking lot, and he’d just climb up into the truck over her downed corpse.

She looked down again at her bleeding foot. One of her toenails had ripped half off, the littlest one on her right foot, and she was standing in a small puddle of her own blood.

“I am calling the cops,” she repeated. “I am calling them right now.”

The man closed the passenger door. Then he skirted around the front of the truck and opened the driver’s side door.

“Don’t you get in that truck,” Sammie yelled.

Samson was squirming, and she could barely keep a grip on him. She stepped back, dragging her son out of the truck’s path.

“Don’t you dare get in that truck! I am calling the cops, and you are going to stay right here!”

The man didn’t listen, didn’t even look at her, just climbed in and started the engine. He was going to leave; he was going to drive away from this, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

“Help!” she yelled.

Samson wriggled and nearly escaped, so she caught his T-shirt by the neck and gripped him there, too hard, she knew, because he made a squeak and then stopped moving.

“Someone help me! Child abduction!”

There wasn’t anybody else in the parking lot. She looked around frantically and saw that the woman who’d been pushing the stroller with the kid too big for it was setting out a picnic lunch. Only fifty feet away, maybe less, and still the woman didn’t acknowledge her screams for help.

She pulled Samson a few feet farther back, worried the man might plow the truck straight into them. But he just eased the truck around Sammie and her son and pulled out of the lot.

It was a Dodge, a bright, glossy red Dodge. She strained to see the license plate and started repeating the numbers aloud: “GN5 8V6, GN5 8V6, GN5 8V6.”

Samson was on his feet but hanging limp, dragging like he weighed a thousand pounds, the way he always did when he was being forced to do something he didn’t want to do. She kept repeating the plate number as she struggled back to the playground, steering him in front of her with one hand clamped around his neck and a fistful of his T-shirt. There was something in the sole of her foot, glass, maybe, and her toe was throbbing, and her back hurt so bad she couldn’t breathe. It felt like the truck had run her over.

Throughout all this, the mother with the stroller had been sitting calmly nearby, at a picnic table under the park’s solitary oak tree. When they reached the fence, she called out to the woman to call 911. Then she sat down right where she stood and wept.

“Ants,” Samson said, rubbing at his neck. It had a wild red mark where Sammie had grabbed him, and his collar was all yanked out. His face was dirty. He could use a wet wipe.

The woman came over and handed her a cell phone. “I didn’t know what to tell them,” she whispered, as if the situation were some kind of embarrassing secret. Her own kid was still sitting in the stroller, Velcro shoes kicking so hard the bags on top nearly fell off.

Sammie wondered if the kid had some kind of problem that required them to be in a stroller well past the usual age.

But what did that matter? She needed to focus. Sammie took the phone and spat out the license plate number to the dispatcher before she forgot it. Then she backed up and tried to explain what had happened, calling it an “attempted abduction.” She described what the man looked like, what he’d been wearing. She told them about his too-perfect teeth. How his truck had a CB radio. She ran through everything she remembered, which wasn’t much. She could barely remember her own name. It had all happened so fast, sped by in a blur. Then, in a fit of embarrassment, she hung up-only to realize she hadn’t taken down any information. She didn’t know the dispatcher’s name; all she knew was that it was a woman. Or she thought it was a woman, anyway, with that high-pitched voice. And Sammie had hung up before giving them a number to contact her. How would they reach her? Was the callback number logged automatically? It was the stranger’s cell phone, not Sammie’s. Would she need to call back and start all over with someone new?
Already the license plate number had flown from her brain.

She looked down at her son leaning against the fence.

“Ants,” he said again, and he kept saying it: “ants,” “ants,” “ants.”

And then she felt them crawling up her legs.

Sammie leaped to her feet and dusted them off, then moved the both of them around the corner to a spot without any bugs. There were hundreds of dandelions peppering the grass, wild, fluffy things that stirred in the breeze, but her child picked up an abandoned straw from a fast-food cup and started playing with it. She was going into shock, she could feel it. Her entire body was shutting down. She knew she should call her wife, tell her what happened, but all she had was this borrowed phone, and she couldn’t remember the number.

Why don’t I know my wife’s phone number by heart? she wondered. What if there was an emergency?

Samson dug the straw into the ground and scooped some up, then blew into the other end. Dirt rained down onto Sammie’s head, sprinkled down her top. Then he did it again. Sammie just sat there, too exhausted to stop him. Finally, the other woman came over to get her phone. When she saw what Samson was doing, she took the straw away herself and tucked it in her pants pocket.

“Don’t put things from the ground in your mouth,” she said. “That’s not nice.”

As she walked away, Samson picked up a fistful of dirt. He held it over his mother’s head, slowly opened his fingers, and let the dirt land where it wanted.

US

Additional information

Dimensions	0.8200 × 5.4500 × 8.2100 in
Imprint	Riverhead Books
ISBN-13	09780593191521
ISBN-10	0593191528
Author	Kristen Arnett
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC019000, FIC018000
Subjects	relationship books, short stories, saga, funny books, family life, literary fiction, teeth, essays, lesbian fiction, lgbt books, american literature, humorous fiction, lesbian books, fiction books, books fiction, realistic fiction books, lgbt fiction, lgbt novels, marriage books, best book club books, lesbian novels, mostly dead things, fiction, feminism, LGBTQ, divorce, marriage, relationships, family, modern, comedy, lesbian, romance, Literature, Friendship, literary, FIC019000, book club books, lgbt, humor, novels, chick lit, funny, FIC018000