Milk Teeth

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Nor as the woman who relates to that sense of never being whole, never being enough, while wanting nothing more than to let someone else fill me up and decide where life goes next. I remember speaking to Jessica Andrews on a patchy phone connection from my living room in London one cold, dark January night in 2020. i am beyond grateful to sceptre for sending me an advance copy of her equally as gorgeous, brutally honest and emotional follow-up. There’s a claustrophobia about the narrative effectively conveying her mental state, a self-absorption that accompanies her turmoil uncomfortably portrayed. The writing was excellent, so descriptive and lyrical - it flowed beautifully and made me want to read everything Andrews has ever written - I can’t believe I haven’t read Saltwater yet.

The plot is non-chronological, flipping between our unnamed protagonist’s present and past relationships as she attempts to come to terms with her own wants from life. And her - much like she does her friends and the man she is enraptured by - pushing us a safe distance away. I think about all the years I have struggled to articulate myself in my own language, pushing my words into my body instead.

Growing up as a female, finding your space; the constant worry that you are taking up too much of it, and the things that, as a young woman, you do to ensure you don’t, the things you do to ensure you are diminished, smaller, more palatable to those around you, contorting yourself to fit the patriarchal norms that for the most part inform the structures we inhabit. I would rather sit down to eat and think with Jessica Andrews any day: Milk Teeth is a novel about holding space, and the hard work that it takes. every chapter ending with her “itching with want”, “soaking you in want”, “filled with want” we get it, you want. I am so impressed that I want to read everything Andrews has ever written - I have Saltwater downloaded as an audiobook, and it's now bumped up the priority list.

These things follow her into adulthood where her battle to resist the throes of falling in love come up against her need to be whole alone.

If you enjoy a book in which every other sentence is an overwritten flowery, cheesy metaphor or simile, then this is the one for you.

I am not the kind of person who lets myself curl up softly in the folds of someone else, but you took my mottled shell in your gentle fingers and I slid out, wanting. Her equally nameless lover is an academic who, soon after meeting her, is offered a position in Barcelona. Det finns något där som skulle kunna vara väldigt bra tror jag men samtidigt är det väldigt mycket tjej som gått skrivarskola-vibe. Andrews takes aim at the cultural pressures shaping unhealthy ideals of femininity without ever seeming to preach. With unironic uses of stars and constellations that propel plot and navigate our narrator, I'm not quite sure how many filtered sunsets I needed to read through to get to any meaning whatsover.The book is heavy with heartbreak, loneliness, want and desire, but there's plenty of love and positivity too. Although, one of the people is a arty, angular male named who provided a lot of horn over these pages, but then slowly shape-shifted into a controlling shadow. This is reflected in the language, each sentence feeling like a bevy of sensation without a single word wasted.

If you would like to experience Milk Teeth without suffering through all 248 pages of it, you can read my abridged version below. Her writing is striking – vibrant descriptive passages coupled with stark observations as our narrator struggles to understand what she wants, having spent much of her life running away from herself.There are passages of aching sadness for this young woman: lost, self-destructive, longing to understand what she wants and needs from life and to be able to take it. another book about a young woman in her 20s figuring life out and being self-destructive (do i read anything else?