With Teeth

Don't know why this has such low reviews but that's to be expected since I guess my taste is a little weird. I would call this masterpiece the Lesbian Floridian successor to We Need to Talk About Kevin: it has a lot of the same bare bones as Kevin but it's less of a suspense than it is a slow-paced dramedy about a single family--and how Arnett so lovingly imbues her characters and setting with idiosyncrasies and vivacious, quirky, dry humour! As much as it is a lesbian drama it is also a love letter to Florida: an inglorious yet sentimental portrait of its tropical humidity, class-stratification, and barren car-dependency. For me, and it would seem I am proudly alone in this, With Teeth vies with The First Bad Man for best fiction.

3 stars seems a bit mean but 4 seems too generous. Not sure if I enjoyed it or not but it certainly had me captivated. The characters annoyed me but I guess that’s a sign they’re written well.

This is my first book by Arnett and I really enjoy her writing style. It's clever; she creates quirky characters; the pages fly.

So why am I not giving it more than three stars? Because I didn't find any of her characters likable. Their backstories perhaps helped explain why they were the way there were, bu they did nothing to engender enough sympathy to outweigh the characters' general awfulness. I suspect parents out there might give it an extra star for capturing the complex (and conflicting) emotions of raising a child you love, but don't like very much.