Skylit: Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth with Esmé Weijun Wang

Jun
1:30am
Skylit: Kristen Arnett, author of With Teeth with Esmé Weijun Wang

By Skylight Books
With Teeth (Riverhead)
Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Elle, BuzzFeed, Good Housekeeping, Thrillist, The Advocate, Lit Hub, and Paperback Paris

From the author of the New York Times–bestselling sensation Mostly Dead Things: a surprising and moving story of two mothers, one difficult son, and the limitations of marriage, parenthood, and love

If she’s being honest, Sammie Lucas is scared of her son. Working from home in the close quarters of their Florida house, she lives with one wary eye peeled on Samson, a sullen, unknowable boy who resists her every attempt to bond with him. Uncertain in her own feelings about motherhood, she tries her best—driving, cleaning, cooking, prodding him to finish projects for school—while growing increasingly resentful of Monika, her confident but absent wife. As Samson grows from feral toddler to surly teenager, Sammie’s life begins to deteriorate into a mess of unruly behavior, and her struggle to create a picture-perfect queer family unravels. When her son’s hostility finally spills over into physical aggression, Sammie must confront her role in the mess—and the possibility that it will never be clean again.

Blending the warmth and wit of Arnett’s breakout hit, Mostly Dead Things, with a candid take on queer family dynamics, With Teeth is a thought-provoking portrait of the delicate fabric of family—and the many ways it can be torn apart.Kristen Arnett is the author of the New York Times-bestselling novel Mostly Dead Things and the award-winning collection Felt in the Jaw. A queer writer based in Florida, she has written for The New York Times, Guernica,McSweeney’s, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and a winner of the Ninth Letter Literary Award in Fiction and the Coil Book Award.
Esmé Weijun Wang is the New York Times bestselling author of The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays and the novel The Border of Paradise. She received the Whiting Award in 2018 and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists of 2017; she has also received fellowships to Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan and lives in San Francisco.
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