Her parents rejected her because she is queer, so she doesn’t have an extended family for support either. Sammie feels left out of those social interactions. But Sammie’s isolation is deeper than a heterosexual mother’s simply because most other mothers she encounters are heterosexual and they form groups with each other. The boredom of being stuck at home while the rest of the world and life are passing you by. The loss of power in a relationship when the breadwinner makes all financial decisions. In some ways, Sammie’s dilemma is faced by every stay-at-home mom.

Sammie seems lost in a fog of depression over the loss of career and identity that develops as she becomes the stay-at-home mom while her partner still has a challenging career. Samson is a difficult child, but that alone isn’t the issue. Sammie and Monika are a lesbian married couple who decide to have a child, a decision that rips holes in their relationship. The plot moves rather slowly because of her tendency toward constant, repetitive introspection about her domestic issues and sex life-or the lack of it-yet the characters themselves were intriguing enough to make the novel a fast read. These short segments offer refreshing perspective, particularly because Sammie is an unreliable and often unlikable narrator.

Set in Central Florida, most of the story is told from Sammie’s point of view, with occasional page-long chapters told by other incidental characters who encounter Sammie and her family. Or if some children with mental and emotional issues, like Sammie’s son Sampson, might exceed a mother’s ability to love. It left me wondering if some women, like the protagonist Sammie, might be born without mothering instincts. From the first scenes, it sinks its teeth in and refuses to let go. Kristen Arnett’s novel With Teeth (Riverhead Books, 2021) is a literary novel that bites.

With teeth kristen arnett review