3.5
Split Tooth
ByPublisher Description
Longlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize
Shortlisted for the 2019 Amazon First Novel Award
Shortlisted for the 2019 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize
Winner of the 2019 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Prose in English
Winner of the 2018 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design – Prose Fiction
Longlisted for the 2019 Sunburst Award
From the internationally acclaimed Inuit throat singer who has dazzled and enthralled the world with music it had never heard before, a fierce, tender, heartbreaking story unlike anything you've ever read.
Fact can be as strange as fiction. It can also be as dark, as violent, as rapturous. In the end, there may be no difference between them.
A girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s. She knows joy, and friendship, and parents' love. She knows boredom, and listlessness, and bullying. She knows the tedium of the everyday world, and the raw, amoral power of the ice and sky, the seductive energy of the animal world. She knows the ravages of alcohol, and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She sees the spirits that surround her, and the immense power that dwarfs all of us.
When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this.
Veering back and forth between the grittiest features of a small arctic town, the electrifying proximity of the world of animals, and ravishing world of myth, Tanya Tagaq explores a world where the distinctions between good and evil, animal and human, victim and transgressor, real and imagined lose their meaning, but the guiding power of love remains.
Haunting, brooding, exhilarating, and tender all at once, Tagaq moves effortlessly between fiction and memoir, myth and reality, poetry and prose, and conjures a world and a heroine readers will never forget.
Shortlisted for the 2019 Amazon First Novel Award
Shortlisted for the 2019 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize
Winner of the 2019 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Prose in English
Winner of the 2018 Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design – Prose Fiction
Longlisted for the 2019 Sunburst Award
From the internationally acclaimed Inuit throat singer who has dazzled and enthralled the world with music it had never heard before, a fierce, tender, heartbreaking story unlike anything you've ever read.
Fact can be as strange as fiction. It can also be as dark, as violent, as rapturous. In the end, there may be no difference between them.
A girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s. She knows joy, and friendship, and parents' love. She knows boredom, and listlessness, and bullying. She knows the tedium of the everyday world, and the raw, amoral power of the ice and sky, the seductive energy of the animal world. She knows the ravages of alcohol, and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She sees the spirits that surround her, and the immense power that dwarfs all of us.
When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this.
Veering back and forth between the grittiest features of a small arctic town, the electrifying proximity of the world of animals, and ravishing world of myth, Tanya Tagaq explores a world where the distinctions between good and evil, animal and human, victim and transgressor, real and imagined lose their meaning, but the guiding power of love remains.
Haunting, brooding, exhilarating, and tender all at once, Tagaq moves effortlessly between fiction and memoir, myth and reality, poetry and prose, and conjures a world and a heroine readers will never forget.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesSplit Tooth Reviews
3.5
“really don’t know how to rate this one. it’s not like anything I’ve ever read. it may change the more I think about it”“I feel so conflicted about this book. I read and listened to it to get the full experience. And it is beautifully written. It felt like a fever dream while I was experiencing it. Experience truly is the right word to explain reading it. The audiobook felt more like performance art than anything. The narrative unsettled me and did discuss dark matters.
At the same time, I felt confused. Sometimes, I would feel down without any context. I just know that there's something about it that makes me uneasy. I try to dissect what is happening and fail.
So I am stuck in the middle when it comes to this book. It is the type of book you might have conflicting feelings for. You can probably decide whether this is for you or not quickly. The format is interesting.”
“Read the trigger warnings!! I think this book is incredibly unique and poetic. I feel like I’m a little dense when it comes to poetry therefore I felt confused often. However this is objectively such a raw and poetic book and I’m glad I finished it. The audiobook features throat singing from the author and that is so beautiful and unique to listen to and truly enhances the story. Overall I think this was an uncomfortable and difficult read for me in terms of both the content and the prose. I felt sad, heart broken, confused and uncomfortable reading this book. This book is dedicated to missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and survivors of residential schools and for that alone I think it is such an important read and so important to make space in our life’s to educate ourselves, learn and grown in empathy.”
BelievableChange and growMultilayeredOriginalConfusingAtmosphericBeautifulBleakDarkEerieEvocative imageryExpansiveGrittyHarshMysteriousSetting fits the storyBeautifully-writtenHard to followTakes getting used toAbuseAnimal abuseChild abuseChild lossDomestic violenceExplicit sexual contentMurderSelf-harmSexual assaultSubstance abuseViolence
About Tanya Tagaq
TANYA TAGAQ is an improvisational performer, avant-garde composer, and experimental recording artist who won the 2014 Polaris Music Prize for her album Animism, a work that disrupted the music world in Canada and beyond with its powerfully original vision. Tagaq contorts elements of punk, metal, and electronica into a complex and contemporary sound that begins in breath, a communal and fundamental phenomenon. While the Polaris Prize signaled an awakening to Tanya Tagaq's art and messages, she has been touring and collaborating with an elite international circle of artists for over a decade. Tagaq's improvisational approach lends itself to collaboration across genres, and recent projects have pulled her in vastly different directions, from contributing guest vocals to a F**ked Up song (a hardcore punk band from Toronto) to premiering a composition made for Kronos Quartet's Fifty for the Future collection, and composing a piece for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Tanya's most recent album Retribution was released in fall 2016.
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