The Spirit Bares its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White Published by Holiday House on September 5, 2023
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Fantasy / Historical, Young Adult Fiction / LGBTQ
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781682636183Andrew Joseph White returns with the transgressive gothic horror of our time!
Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.
London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife.
After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its guts to the world—so long as the school doesn’t break him first.
Featuring an autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting, Andrew Joseph White’s much-anticipated sophomore novel does not back down from exposing the violence of the patriarchy and the harm inflicted on trans youth who are forced into conformity.
Started the year with an Andrew Joseph White book and finishing it with one, wish I had read this sooner too!
I was completely hooked by this book. Andrew Joseph White is definitely an auto-buy author for me. He writes such compelling plots with beautiful characters that I can’t help but fall in love with. In this one, Silas is adorable, and I definitely want to do everything to protect him like a younger brother. I love that Luckenbill’s son is also trans and sees herself as a female named Daphne.
There’s so much to unpack in this book from women’s issues to mental health to transgender rights to medical practices. White explores all of these and takes such good care of each topic. With Silas’s autism, he is thought of as an “imbecile” and of course, it is one of the reasons that he is at Braxton’s, as well as his interest in surgery, stimming, and the misunderstanding of social cues. Silas actually ends up finding someone like him in the gardener and realizing that he’s not broken or wrong, just different.
The women’s issues will definitely anger you as they did me while reading. I actually had to take breathing breaks as I was getting so pissed off at how these men acted. I mean it’s all the typical Victorian ideas that women are inferior and feeble minded. The men take and wonder why women aren’t happy.
Another aspect to be aware of is the body horror. Obviously, there is abuse happening at Braxton’s from the headmaster, the doctor, and the headmaster’s wife (who is also a previous student cause that’s not disgusting). The abuse is not just the typical abuse of a Victorian sanatorium but also the men trying to figure out where and how women are born with violet-eyes by performing vivisections (basically, an autopsy while you’re still alive, which is illegal). There’s also body horror in regards to Silas. His interest in surgery leads him to have moments of wanting to look into someone’s body and dissect their insides. There’s times where he thinks about performing surgeries on himself to remove his female organs (a hysterectomy). However, I do want to note, he doesn’t want to hurt others. It’s just a fascination to see how the body operates not in a way to hurt like the men in charge at the school.
I cannot recommend this book enough it’s so good and horrific and wonderful!
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