The spirit bares its teeth by Andrew Joseph White

White writes that his latest book is inspired by ‘Victorian England’s sordid history of labelling certain people ‘ill’ or ‘other’ to justify cruelty against them’. And he claims that his novel does not reflect the full extent of medical experimentation on minority peoples. Be warned, this novel is full of gore, graphic surgical procedures and violence. It is a horror story, set in a fantasy world within 1880’s London. If you read the prologue, typed in white text on black paper, you know what you are in for, and it’s up to each reader whether they read further or not.

It is the story of a 16 year-old violet-eyed girl, at a time when the Speaker Society values violet-eyed girls, as highly desirable wives in order to produce male progeny with spiritual powers. However Gloria, despite her eyes, abhors this future, regardless of the status and wealth it might bring her, because at heart she feels she is a boy. ‘She’ is in fact ‘he’, and Silas is his preferred name. His heart thumps like a rabbit, full of fear for his future because ‘It will hurt it will hurt it will hurt’.

White immerses the reader in Silas’s world. We feel his fear, the tension that manifests in stumbling words and flapping hands, his tears, his anxiety and suppressed anger. He is desperate to escape his future, but his plans go awry and he finds himself imprisoned in the monstrous Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School. And that is where the real horror begins.

White is a brilliant writer, he clutches at our hearts, and the pace keeps us glued to the page. We become immersed in the inner world of the trans person hiding in a society that will not accept them. I have read reviews that have thanked him and welcomed his portrayal of this world. The fantasy becomes a metaphor for the fear and anxiety that they endure, and at the same time shines a light on historical barbaric attempts to force them to conform to ‘normality’.

I was drawn into this novel and read it to the end, but not being a fan of the horror genre, I found the gore a bit too much at times, and for that reason would recommend it for an older readership than his previous YA book Compound fracture. Compound Fracture is highly recommended as an introduction to this genre. I think that perhaps The spirit that bares its teeth became an unrestrained outpouring that could have benefited from some sympathetic editing. That said, I am sure that any White novel will be a confrontational but necessary revelation of a viewpoint that has been long neglected in YA literature.

Themes: Horror, Fantasy, Mystery, Identity, Transgender, Autism, Surgical procedures, Fear, Oppression, Diversity.

Helen Eddy