Cutting Teeth
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (May 13, 2014)
One of the most anticipated debut novels of 2014, Cutting Teeth takes place one late-summer weekend as a group of thirty-something couples gather at a shabby beach house on Long Island, their young children in tow.
Nicole, the hostess, struggles to keep her OCD behaviors unnoticed. Stay-at-home dad Rip grapples with the reality that his careerist wife will likely deny him a second child, forcing him to disrupt the life he loves. Allie, one half of a two-mom family, can’t stop imagining ditching her wife and kids in favor of her art. Tiffany, comfortable with her amazing body but not so comfortable in the upper-middle class world the other characters were born into, flirts dangerously, and spars with her best friend Leigh, a blue blood secretly facing financial ruin and dependent on the magical Tibetan nanny everyone else covets. Throughout the weekend, conflicts intensify and painful truths surface. Friendships and alliances crack, forcing the house party to confront a new order.
Cutting Teeth is about the complex dilemmas of early midlife—the vicissitudes of friendship, of romantic and familial love, and of sex. It’s about class tension, status hunger, and the unease of being in possession of life’s greatest bounty while still wondering, is this as good as it gets? And, perhaps most of all, Julia Fierro’s warm and unpretentious debut explores the all-consuming love we feel for those we need most, and the sacrifice and compromise that underpins that love.
“Entertaining, wise, heart-breaking at times, Cutting Teeth is an outstanding debut. Julia Fierro’s particular genius is her ability to understand and render the vagaries of the human heart.”~ Therese Anne Fowler, author of the bestselling Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
“Timely and observant, Julia Fierro’s debut feels like real life. She captures the anxiety of our times with the authority, insight—and humor—of lived experience.”~ Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Age of Miracles
“I fell in love with Cutting Teeth’s insightful, graceful voice, and a narrative that carried me from beginning to end in one rush. A compelling debut infused with compassion.”~ Jean Kwok, author of Girl in Translation
“Fierro’s first novel captures the complexity of forging new friendships and redefining lives as contemporary parents. Her characters are meticulously drawn, the situations emotionally charged. Readers, especially young parents, won’t be able to look away.” – BOOKLIST (April issue)
Purchase Links
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My Review:
To me one of the biggest things that makes a book good is character development. If the characters are good or bad, it doesn't matter as long as they FEEL real to me. This genre of books, let's call it Mommy-Fic, can feel either really fluffy and comedic or really overly dramatic and fake. Cutting Teeth was a very realistic and at times utterly brutal look at what happens when people become parents, and feel like they are losing themselves.
Not a single one of these characters are very likeable, BUT they do come across as real. These people are going through what every parent feels in some way or another..the "Who am I now?" question that we all ask ourselves. Some just hide it better.
I really liked the writing style. The changing POV's kept the story flowing. However, the plot was kind of wavering on occasion. I wasn't exactly sure at times there was one, but I did feel the interesting characters made up for it.
All in all I really found myself lost in this world.
My Review:
To me one of the biggest things that makes a book good is character development. If the characters are good or bad, it doesn't matter as long as they FEEL real to me. This genre of books, let's call it Mommy-Fic, can feel either really fluffy and comedic or really overly dramatic and fake. Cutting Teeth was a very realistic and at times utterly brutal look at what happens when people become parents, and feel like they are losing themselves.
Not a single one of these characters are very likeable, BUT they do come across as real. These people are going through what every parent feels in some way or another..the "Who am I now?" question that we all ask ourselves. Some just hide it better.
I really liked the writing style. The changing POV's kept the story flowing. However, the plot was kind of wavering on occasion. I wasn't exactly sure at times there was one, but I did feel the interesting characters made up for it.
All in all I really found myself lost in this world.
About Julia Fierro
Julia Fierro’s debut novel, Cutting Teeth, was listed as one
of the “Most Anticipated Books of 2014” by HuffPost Books, The
Millions, Flavorwire, Brooklyn Magazine, and Marie Claire. Her work has
been published, or is forthcoming, in Guernica, Ploughshares, Poets
& Writers, Glamour, and other publications, and she has been
profiled in the L Magazine, The Observer, and The Economist.
Connect with Julia
"what happens when people become parents, and feel like they are losing themselves" I can identify with that. I had to rediscover myself after being a parent for a few years. It was a challenge!
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