The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
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The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
Narrated by:
Raphael Corkhill
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Raphael Corkhill
About this listen
A blood-soaked and nauseating triumph that cuts like a scalpel and reads like your darkest nightmare.
New York Times bestselling author Andrew Joseph White returns with the transgressive gothic horror of our time!
Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.
London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife.
After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its guts to the world—so long as the school doesn’t break him first.
Featuring an autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting, Andrew Joseph White’s much-anticipated sophomore novel does not back down from exposing the violence of the patriarchy and the harm inflicted on trans youth who are forced into conformity.
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It is supposed to be set in Victorian England, with elements of it's gohic era. The story in itself is not badly written, but the protagonist doesn't feel organic. Silas feels like an amalgamation of everything in the autism spectrum.
There's some amount of gory descriptions in the book but the way its been written feels funny in places. You can tell it was written to shock the reader, rather than serving the plot.
Where the book shines is when the protagonists does specific commentary on surgery. Silas also takes inspiration on one of the only two real life history people quoted in the book. The trans surgeon James Barry that existed irl. The only other mention of an actual history person is Prince Albert.
There's a whole part of the book at the end showing where the author searched for historical accuracy, but honestly, with so many fictional things happening in the book, one wonders if it was necessary to have any. If the book would work just fine without any need to force a bit of real history in to it. The author could have simply stated that he searched about it without actually adding it to the story, since it doesn't add anything to the plot as well.There's no need to mention the existence of a trans surgeon as a goal for the protagonist throughout the whole book if he will never reach it.
Character wise, the book doesn't disappoint, it is vast in different grey personalities of both men and women, as well as in including disabilities.
The ending unfortunately feels rushed and not well developed. It is a trans survival book as the author said, but I somehow wished for something more in this work of fiction. The story almost feels unfinished, as if it's waiting on a sequel.
The author indeed created an interesting universe that has a lot of potential. It doesn't need any historical accuracy to work I would say, but rather let the characters take this universe as far from ours as possible, as if to shine a light and guide us (the ghosts) to a better place.
Nice period gothic novel
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