But at its icy, fiery heart, this is a book about female puberty. At times, to this reader from a temperate clime, the book reads like science fiction or horror: encounters with the Northern Lights, journeys by snowmobile over frozen seas, battles with malignant spirits and musings on quantum physics.

Split Tooth is a novel, with frequent nods to memoir, poetry, and traditional tales.

It would be no exaggeration to say that she's an Inuit superstar. For me, though, it's one of the most impressive books I have read in years.Īuthor Tanya Tagaq’s Wikipedia page describes her as a “Canadian Inuk throat singer from Cambridge Bay ( Iqaluktuutiaq), Nunavut, Canada.” Tagaq has released four solo albums of increasing artistic range and ferocity, has collaborated with Bjork and the Kronos Quartet, tours worldwide, is an accomplished painter and an outspoken advocate for indigenous rights and climate activism. On that basis, this book - which contains enthusiastic teenage solvent abuse, erotic encounters with wild animals and gleeful retribution against human bullies and predators - may not be everyone's cup of tea. Haunting, brooding, exhilarating, and tender all at once, Tagaq moves effortlessly between fiction and memoir, myth and reality, poetry and prose, and conjures a world and a heroine readers will never forget.It's my impression that many readers of the Arctic Book Review are seeking stirring tales of exploration from long ago. Veering back and forth between the grittiest features of a small arctic town, the electrifying proximity of the world of animals, and ravishing world of myth, Tanya Tagaq explores a world where the distinctions between good and evil, animal and human, victim and transgressor, real and imagined lose their meaning, but the guiding power of love remains.

When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this. She sees the spirits that surround her, and the immense power that dwarfs all of us. She knows the ravages of alcohol, and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She knows the tedium of the everyday world, and the raw, amoral power of the ice and sky, the seductive energy of the animal world. She knows boredom, and listlessness, and bullying. She knows joy, and friendship, and parents' love. In the end, there may be no difference between them.Ī girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s.

It can also be as dark, as violent, as rapturous. From the internationally acclaimed Inuit throat singer who has dazzled and enthralled the world with music it had never heard before, a fierce, tender, heartbreaking story unlike anything you've ever read.įact can be as strange as fiction.

Tanya tagaq book