‘Baby Teeth’ a mesmerizing thriller about parental fear
The fear of an “evil” child is a primal one. The idea of something as innately innocent as a child being corrupted and twisted into something monstrous is an abomination of the natural order, and it is a concept that has historically been used to great effect in fiction. From John Wyndham’s 1957 book “The Midwich Cuckoos” (adapted as the 1960 film “The Village of the Damned”) to the 2003 novel “We Need to Talk About Kevin” by Lionel Shriver (adapted to film in 2011), precociously ghoulish kids have found eager audiences worldwide.
Now, there’s a new entry in this particular literary niche: “Baby Teeth,” the debut novel from Pittsburgher Zoje Stage, and it’s a worthy addition to the (creepy) canon. Ms. Stage’s portrayal of a couple living at the mercy of their murderous 7-year-old is a tense and thrilling one. Some readers may be stuck seeing the image of young Hanna Jensen behind their eyelids once the lights are out.
Suzette and Alex Jensen live in Shadyside with their intelligent and mute daughter, Hanna, and as the novel opens, Suzette is in crisis. Hanna, who has already been expelled from multiple schools for various anti-social acts, has focused on her mother with a hateful intensity, and Suzette is wracked with guilt over her own ambivalent feelings toward motherhood, even as Hanna acts out with escalating frequency and ferocity.
Ms. Stage’s choice to have Suzette and Hanna as the narrators of alternate chapters is a clever one, and it allows a fuller portrait of the relationship between mother and daughter than is usually available in this kind of story. As readers see the Jensen family through Hanna’s eyes, the disconnects between Suzette and Hanna,