"We are not individuals but great accumulation of all that lived before."
Tanya Tagaq is a woman of many talents - in addition to being a writer, she is a renowned Inuk throat singer. In her novel, Split Tooth, we follow a young girl’s coming of age as she navigates life in an Inuit community.
This novel, alternating between prose and poetry, reads like a dream journal. The writing is lyrical, largely focusing on spirituality, nature, and community, and the descriptions of life in the Arctic tundra were mystical. As the plot progresses, things become increasingly strange as the narrator interacts with the spirit and animal world, and the duality of good and evil cannot be severed. This is a novel for lovers of the mythical and the avant-garde, and not for the faint of heart.
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