Milk Teeth

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Andrews' prose is distinctly stylised. It possesses a heightened sensuality which reflects the protagonist's aspiration to live fiercely, "like lightning" - free of restraint . . . Milk Teeth possesses a highly charged and often deliberately uncomfortable intimacy. -- Michael Donkor ― i The heat of Barcelona and the warmth of the romance and emotions between our two main characters juxtapose so well with the coldness of London and the fear and loneliness felt as well as the sadness, anxiety and negative but entirely overpowering view and perception of food, body image, and eating. As in her first, prize-winning novel Saltwater, Andrews’ prose is distinctly stylised. It possesses a heightened sensuality which reflects the protagonist’s aspiration to live fiercely, “like lightning” – free of restraint. As such, towards the end of the novel, the narrator finds herself in a street party in Barcelona where “the music drags [her] into the centre of the crowd, opening like a wet mouth and swallowing [her] whole”. For a novel that is so sharp and often written with such linguistic utility, it isn’t at all sparse. Despite these moments in which the narration is given the control that the narrator so desires, this novel is full. In fact, fittingly, one might say it has real weight. From the author of the award-winning Saltwater comes a beautifully told love story set across England, France and Spain.

How do we learn to take up space? Why might we deny ourselves good things? Milk Teeth is a story of desire and the body, shame and joy. In vivid and lyrical prose, and with deep compassion, Jessica Andrews examines what it means to allow ourselves to live. A girl grows up in the north of England amid scarcity, precarity and the toxic culture of heroin chic, believing that she needs to make herself smaller to claim presence in the world.Andrews acutely honed in on the contradictory ways in which you can think (key part here being “think”) you are in control of your body, life, food etc. When in reality, you could not be further from it. 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. The narrator’s resentment towards her hunger is due to its uncontrollability, its unquenchability. It’s easy to feel like hunger is the enemy when you’re unsure if, how, or when it will be satiated. The unnamed female narrator of Milk Teeth, plagued by bodily shame, leaves her toxic family in Durham and travels to London, Paris and Barcelona, unable to escape her emotional demons. Told in short vignettes oscillating between the present and the past, the narrative can feel jarring, and there is a tendency towards self-indulgence that hampers the potential for emotional insight, but Andrews nonetheless explores some important issues.

Class and gender are central and it is unusual to read a strong working class northern female voice. It is semi-autobiographical and parts of it mirrors Andrews’ own experience. Andrews looks at stereotypes and her own experience and the tensions growing up and moving on bring:The plot is non-chronological, flipping between our unnamed protagonist's present and past relationships as she attempts to come to terms with her life expectations, wants and regrets, predominantly that she's not living up to her potential. He wanted to dance to music and to enjoy the delicate nuance of spoken language. He learned the way that putting feelings into words and out into the world could ease the pressure inside, like letting air out of a balloon."

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Andrews’s 2019 debut novel, Saltwater(Sceptre),exploredthe experience of young women todayandwent on to win the 2020 Portico Prize, with the judges calling it a“powerful, provocative and poignant tale”. 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.” I come from a line of immaculately turned-out women, experts in dusting make-up over their faces to conceal the tremors that ran through their lives."We lay in the wet grass in the park, catching stars on the ends of our eyelashes. My new friends said things like, 'This park has a bad heart,' or 'the sky is falling down,' and I knew what they meant, lacing my fingers through theirs and running through the lavender dawn, our long coats flying out behind us.' ha hahahahahahaaaa hahaaaaa haa what Milk Teeth spills over with care, truth and desire. Andrews makes the case for a life lived abundantly and ardently, full of sensation and pleasure, risk and safety. -- Yara Rodrigues Fowler What will make or break it for each individual reader is our response to the prose - for me, it's laboured, try-hard, pseudo-poetic that prioritizes pretty combinations of words over meaning; others may find it lyrical: