A second recommendation: Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow

[juushika]

There's blood everywhere,
but it's the creatures at the edge,
licking the corner of the ruby pool,
that hold your curiosity.
So get this straight
it's not the full moon.
That's as ancient and ignorant as any myth.
The blood just quickens with a thought
a discipline develops
so that one can self-ignite
reshape form, becoming something rather more canine
still conscious, a little hungrier.
It's a raw muscular power
a rich sexual energy
and the food tastes a whole lot better.
—Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow, page 6

I've lately been putting most of my energy into Second Life, but I've also (following a couple month's rest after my long spree last year) gone back to reading a bit. I recently reread Sharp Teeth, and though I've spoken of this book before (in my initial review written after I first read it) I wanted to take a moment to recommend it again.

Because Sharp Teeth was even better the second time around. Knowing the end, I could better see the pieces come together—and it is a very delicate and clever puzzle of a book. I'd been away from it long enough that much of it was new again, giving fresh energy to the plot and the characters. But beyond both, it's simply one of the best books that I've ever read—though it's hard to say why. Everything I could say comes out as superfluous, clichéd praise: Barlow's werewolves are so artfully rendered, a combination of man and beast that has the strengths and weaknesses of both halves. He walks a careful line of dry humor, deep emotion, and bloody savagery so that the book hits home and hits hard but never takes itself too seriously. His verse is poetry that builds and shapes the story: a pause here for love, a tight tense pace for violence, the language and layout and story all feeding into one another.

But in the end, it's just easiest to show.

Dog or wolf? More like one than the other
but neither exactly. Standing on four legs in her fur,
she is her own brand of beast.
She could play in your yard, but
you would not want to find her
crossing your trail in the twilight.
And were you cornered by her,
eye to eye,
you would see that
there are still some watchful creatures
whose essence lies unbounded by words.
There is still a wilderness.
—Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow, pages 39-40

Because this book is impossible to explain. Near the end, in the final battle, Barlow lists the dogs which die. Most of them are strangers—simply a list of names. But one after one, a line break, another list, a line break, another list—Barlow divides these deaths, even in their long string; he makes the reader pause, stop, and read every single goddamned name and mourn every death of every one of these strangers. It's just a list of names, and yet it is so much more.

And so is this novel. I'm a sap, of course I cried through the ending—but not so much for the love and the death but because it is rare to find a which grabs you between its teeth, shakes the sense from you, and refuses to ever let go. Sharp Teeth does. I've recommended it before, will recommend it again, but just had to stop and say: This is one of the best books that I have ever read. You should read it, too.