The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I'll start by saying that I love Andrew Joseph White's writing style. He is fantastic at writing slippery, visceral gore, and even better at writing poignant reflections on how it feels to be transgender, specifically being a transgender man. This novel in particular explores the isolation and pain of feeling decidedly masculine, but still longing to share in some community with your feminine peers. It's wanting to be true to yourself, but hold on to your past just enough that you can convey the shared traumas of being raised as a woman to the people around you. It's complicated stuff, and he nails it on the head. This book is great for that, with a main character who explores autism, transmasc identity, and the intersections between the two beautifully. I can recommend this book for that discussion alone.
That being said, this book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. The setting was interesting but often a little confusing, with the Veil and the spirits housed within serving largely as a device to move the plot forward by revealing hints in the mystery to the character. Veil-sickness itself feels like it was used as an "insert mental illness here" placeholder diagnosis for any kind of imperfection that didn't fit in with this book's version of Victorian England. And on one hand, that's great! It's a powerful way to convey to the reader that real women in history were often sent away to cruel facilities for expressing any kind of imperfection, medicine be damned. But I can't help but feel like the fantasy aspects of the story took away from that underlying message of medical abuse. I liked it, but I can't tell if I feel like it took away from the story or not. [MILD STORY SPOILER!] There was also at least one very clear deus ex machina moment towards the climax of the story that ended up distracting me well towards the end of the book. Maybe a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, but frustrating nonetheless. [END SPOILER]
Additionally, and this is more of a personal complaint, this story was miserable for the main character for the majority of its run. And that is absolutely by no means a dig against the book or its author; from the synopsis alone, you know that this is going to be a rough ride for the main character. And it is. It's rough. And it's hard to read, and you spend most of the book biting your nails and desperately hoping that something will finally go right for Silas, and any time you get a glimmer of hope that things will be okay, it falls away again. Call me a bleeding heart, but it was hard to read. Miserable, but ultimately cathartic. Despite my feelings about the book, AJ White remains the best at writing stories about trans people fighting through hell for their right to live freely by the end. It's just that this time, the hell hit a little too close to home.
For how personal this story feels, and for how important and deeply relatable I feel like the main character is, I can't bring myself to give this book any less than four stars. I definitely would recommend this book, just with the warning that it will hurt going down.
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