Good Reads / Community Library Notes
Baby Teeth
Zoje Stage
Review by Priscilla Comen
Baby Teeth
Zoje Stage
Review by Priscilla Comen
Baby Teeth, by Zoje Stage, is the fascinating story of Hanna, a little girl who doesn’t or won't speak, her perfectionist mother, Suzette, and her Swedish father, Alex. He loves Hanna beyond words, but since Hanna is weird only with her mother, Alex never sees her odd behavior. She has been dismissed from several schools. Once she gave a fellow student pink paint to drink, pretending it was fruit punch. She started a fire in a trash bin to get rid of ants. Hanna is portrayed as a bad girl who also wishes her mommy would die.
Author Stage writes Hanna in first-person voice and alternates chapters with Suzette's voice to keep up the tension. When Hanna makes sexual noises under her blanket, mother calls a therapist to make an appointment. Hanna says she is a French witch burned at the stake and speaks in perfect French. Suzette is terrified. Who is her child? The therapist believes her, and seems to understand.
Hanna cuts her mom’s hair while she is sleeping and makes a collage of her in the nude with photos of dead women from the Internet. This story, and the characters in it, are intense and the author knows how to hold her readers’ interest. Hanna’s daddy wants to have a typical Swedish celebration for the start of Spring. They all get involved in gathering wood branches for the bonfire and Alex brings the food outside: lox and rye bread, herring and sliced tomatoes, plus champagne in glasses. Hanna burns her drawing of the French witch then whispers curses on her Mommy. Suzette trips on a stick, falls toward the fire, and is badly burned. Alex drives her to the urgent care facility. The following day they see the therapist who recommends a special boarding school for Hanna.
What will happen to this family over time? Will Hanna become normal or will she succeed in killing her mommy? Don’t mommy and daddy love Hanna enough? Find this imaginative novel on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library.
Author Stage writes Hanna in first-person voice and alternates chapters with Suzette's voice to keep up the tension. When Hanna makes sexual noises under her blanket, mother calls a therapist to make an appointment. Hanna says she is a French witch burned at the stake and speaks in perfect French. Suzette is terrified. Who is her child? The therapist believes her, and seems to understand.
Hanna cuts her mom’s hair while she is sleeping and makes a collage of her in the nude with photos of dead women from the Internet. This story, and the characters in it, are intense and the author knows how to hold her readers’ interest. Hanna’s daddy wants to have a typical Swedish celebration for the start of Spring. They all get involved in gathering wood branches for the bonfire and Alex brings the food outside: lox and rye bread, herring and sliced tomatoes, plus champagne in glasses. Hanna burns her drawing of the French witch then whispers curses on her Mommy. Suzette trips on a stick, falls toward the fire, and is badly burned. Alex drives her to the urgent care facility. The following day they see the therapist who recommends a special boarding school for Hanna.
What will happen to this family over time? Will Hanna become normal or will she succeed in killing her mommy? Don’t mommy and daddy love Hanna enough? Find this imaginative novel on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library.