'Eleanor has not seen or spoken with her family in years, not since they sent her away to Saint Brigid's boarding school. She knows them only as vague memories: her grandfather's tremendous fanged snout, the barrel full of water her mother always soaked in, and strange hunting trips in a dark wood with her sister and cousins.
'When Eleanor finally returns to their ancestral home on the rainy coast of Maine, she finds them already gathered in wait, seemingly ready to welcome her back with open arms. But a strange and sudden death rocks the family, and in order to keep the family that abandoned her from falling apart, Eleanor calls upon her mysterious other grandmother from across the sea.
'Grandmere brings order to the chaotic household, but that order soon turns to tyranny. If any of them are to survive, Eleanor must embrace her strange family and confront the monstrousness lurking deep within her Grandmere – and herself.'
What Big Teeth tells the story of Eleanor, a young woman who was sent away from her family to attend a boarding school across the country several years ago, and hasn't seen or heard from them since. After a violent altercation at school with one of the fellow students Eleanor packs her bags and heads back to her home. She's not expecting a warm reception, for several reasons, and finds a family strangely familiar, yet also alien to her; her family having moved on in her absence.
The Zarrin family aren't just normal people, however, and each of them holds a dark secret within them. Her grandmother, who rules the household, practices magic, her mother is covered in strange coral-like polyps and must stay wet, and her grandfather, father, cousin, and sister can all change into monstrous wolves and stalk the forests around their home. Despite this strangeness Eleanor seems to be the strangest of all of them, because she's not like the rest of them. She can't become the wolf, and despite trying all her life it doesn't seem like there's one within her. Instead, she has vague memories of something else stirring inside her, something she has no words for.
When her grandmother dies shortly after using her magics to read Eleanor's future Eleanor is left in charge of her grandmother's business, and charged with protecting the family she feels so separated from. When she learns that her mother's mother is still alive she writes to her, asking her to come and help, but this might not be the lifeline she's expecting as shortly after her Grandmere arrives things in the house begin to get worse.
From very early on reading What Big Teeth there are some definite Addams Family vibes going on in this book. The family are all creepy and odd in some way, have connections to magic and folklore, and live in a big mansion away from the rest of the small town community; a community that fears them. It has a Gothic feel baked into every character and moment, and I feel if you put a mood board together for this book it'd be creepy old houses and Tim Burton movies.
Rose Szabo is really good at putting this kind of aesthetic into the story but not going too far with it and making it feel over the top, too much like a caricature. They're able to infuse the house and the family with a strangeness that feels so other, yet everyone in the family feels like a real person. Yes, they might be extreme in some way, but you always feel like you understand what motivates them, why they act the way they do. Szabo is able to make these larger than life beings feel like real people, even if they can also transform into wolves; and that's a hell of an accomplishment.
The character of Eleanor is our main point of view for the book, and thanks to her having spent a number of years away from her family and needing to relearn who they are and what it's like to live with them we get to see them through this fairly fresh perspective. Their strangeness isn't new to her, but thanks to the intervening years away from them is feels like it is. Not only does this allow the readers an easy way into this family, to be shocked by their oddness, but it works well for the story too, and really help to set Eleanor as an outsider, which sets the story up to go in some interesting directions.
I liked Eleanor as a character, despite her making what I felt were some bad mistakes at times, but then that's part of any character's journey. Eleanor is the reason things go wrong in this book, or more precisely, her choices set the family down the path for things to go wrong. But where the rest of her family only seem to have one way of dealing with things, striking out violently, Eleanor is smart enough to know that that won't help them here, and has to use her difference from her family in order to save them. She doesn't have the power or the physical strengths of her family, so she has to learn to use her mind.
Ultimately, this seemed to be one of the main themes of the book; learning and looking for answers. Eleanor has to learn to find her place in a family that she doesn't recognise. She's searching for answers for why she's so different, and to learn more about the thing hidden inside of her. And she's digging into the family's past, trying to discover how they all ended up here.
These brief glimpses into the past were some of my favourite moments, and I loved it when her grandfather told the tale of his home country, some unnamed place somewhere deep in Europe. His story of this land where language didn't exist, where the bells sounded to warn the people of the approaching monsters, and his encounter with the powerful dark entity that stalked them may have been one of the shortest moments in the book, but it left a lasting impression. I think this was the moment that I realised that there was something a little special about this book, and about Rose Szabo as a writer. This tiny part set the tone for the whole novel, and was one of the creepiest and most disturbing moments. I'm hoping that we get to see more like this in Szabo's future work, and I know that if they ever decided to write an intense horror story it'd be incredibly chilling.
What Big Teeth is an interesting, Gothic YA story filled with mystery and horror elements. It's a story about finding your place in the world, of learning to accept your family for their faults and their strangeness. And it's a story about discovering who you really are; and all of it's wrapped up in this wonderfully dark, delightfully queer story. An outstanding debut from an author we should all be keeping an eye on.
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