School was officially over earlier today and since I’ve planned to read at least a couple of books during this holiday break, I decided to finish off Graham Joyce’s relatively short novel, “The Tooth Fairy”.

I had only read some fifty odd intriguing pages before I sat down with it. Time did what it usually does - it kept ticking away - and before I knew it I was done and finished with the entire thing. Let me tell you something right here and now: Books like this are the exact things that makes me love reading to the degree I do. A book that totally envelops all your thoughts and keeps you turning those pages into the wee hours of the night are exactly my kind of heroine, and “the Tooth Fairy” is what I’d describe as a near-perfect fix.

I’ve been meaning to read something by Joyce for a long time now, what with him being one of the most heavily recommended authors out there, and since I was feeling a bit merry the other day, I figured that a sweet and cozy story about tooth fairies would be just what I needed. Well, I was right about the fact that this book was at times quite sweet and cozy, but more often than not it was unfathomably eerie and sinister.

Reading this book is like looking at one of those glossy family pictures where everything is real nice and idyllic from one angle, but when you shift your gaze you suddenly discover that your mother is holding a knife at your father’s throat and the sisters are all revving their bloodspurting chainsaws and laughing manically, but their doing it in a sweet and cozy way. Not that you’ll find any wives with knives (btw, is that a great name for a rockband or what?), bloodspurting chainsaws or maniacal laughter in this book, but you don’t need to read more than the first chapter to figure out that there’s some crazy shit going on.

The story is told in a third person narrative with special insight into one particular character named Sam. We get to follow Sam and his friends as they grow up in the small English town of Redstone. One day, when Sam is just small kid, he loses his first tooth to in a fisticuff, Terry, one of his friends, tells him to put it underneath his pillow so that the Tooth Fairy can give him a six pence for it. Clive, being the smartest boy in the gang, naturally objects to something like the Tooth Fairy even exists; everyone knows that it’s actually your parents who takes the tooth and leaves the six pence. Sam therefore decides to find out for himself if the Tooth Fairy exists by not telling his parents about the tooth. Have a guess at who it is that wakes Sam up at night? Yep, it’s the Tooth Fairy all right, and she isn’t of the Disney variety.

All this happens very early in the book, and you get a very interesting ride along with Sam whose life is haunted and blessed by the at times frightening beautiful and breathtakingly evil Tooth Fairy. But in truth, “the Tooth Fairy” is really a splendidly written coming of age tale that really captures the insanity of childhood and pains of growing up. However, this is far from a child’s book; the Tooth Fairy takes care of that fact…

This book isn’t more than 319 pages long, yet it managed to tell its story in a highly believable manner. You can really tell that Joyce is a master at his craft; the metaphors, characters, dialog and prose are all superb. My favourite character of them all was “Skelton”, Sam’s psychiatrist, who always managed to make me laugh. I have to admit though that the Tooth Fairy really grew on me and she was without doubt the most original member of the cast. This book even had a great ending which tied everything up in a brilliant manner!

All in all I can’t find single thing to criticize. This was simply one of the best books I’ve read in my entire life, and you should really go out of your way to grab yourself a copy of it. Anything else would be an outrage against not only yourself, but every person you’ve ever met. You wouldn’t want that hanging over your head now, would you?

9,5 /10