Trigger warning for reference to child sexual abuse and grooming.
Rory Morris has come back to her hometown to help her pregnant twin, Scarlett, and she is not happy about it. The town reminds her of so many things she fled years ago. Rachel Harrison’s Such Sharp Teeth gets into all of those things by throwing a curveball at Rory that no one could have seen coming. One night, as Rory leaves the bar and the company of one of the people she tried to escape, she is attacked by a mysterious and terrifying creature and left for dead.
When she wakes in the hospital, Rory is surprised that not only is she not dead, her wounds are well on their way to being healed. Rory and her twin bounce out of the hospital as soon as Rory can get some pants and shoes on. It’s hard to blame her. The doctors can’t do anything for what really ails her and there’s a good chance Rory would end up in a government lab or something. Rory has no one to turn to as she develops a growing appetite for meat, nails that grow far too quickly, blood that seems to have turned to silver, and raging emotions ranging from despair to wrath. And she has to deal with all of this in secret as she tries to be useful to her sister and avoid Ian, her high school friend who has suddenly become irresistibly handsome.
It’s amazing how Rory’s condition can be read as a metaphor for so many things: post-traumatic stress, pregnancy and childbirth, women’s sexuality, puberty. I felt emotionally wrung out by the time I finished Such Sharp Teeth. I also wanted to reach through the pages to tell Rory that she needs to take time for herself and communicate with the people she loves about what she’s wrestling with. Of course, the book would’ve been a lot shorter and a lot less gripping if Rory had been less of a psychological mess. (A lot of books would be shorter if the characters had therapists.) Instead, I felt myself cringing along with Rory when her emotionally clueless mother shows up to badger Scarlett into a baby shower and when another high school friend tries to get Rory to relive the old days of drinking and hooking up with dudes at the bar.
The ending of Such Sharp Teeth, thankfully, is cathartic and satisfying. Perhaps things wrapped up a little too quickly, given how much shit gets stirred up for Rory, but I loved how everything turned out.