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The Sharp Teeth of Love
In the High Sierras, a man, a woman, and a boy, each in psychological or physical danger, come together in a dramatic, satisfying way. At the center is Luna Stone, a young woman on the way to California who dumps her self-absorbed boyfriend in Reno and hides out in the mountains near Donner Lake. While camping, she has two visitors, the ghost of Tamsen Donner and a very live runaway boy, escaped from a child porn ring. This is Doris Betts at the top of her form.
- GenresFictionNovelsUnfinished
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
3 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Doris Betts
41 books10 followersDoris Betts (1932-2012), former Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, wrote nine novels and three collections of short stories, including The Gentle Insurrection, The Sharp Teeth of Love, Souls Raised from the Dead, which won the Southern Book Award, and Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Betts taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for 35 years. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and received a medal from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 16, 2019
Again, I think my expectations from a novel must be different from everyone else's. This book doesn't appear to be widely available and isn't offered in Kindle format at all. The Amazon reviews are pretty harsh, overall.
So, me? I liked it. Quite a bit, actually. I bought it at a library sale for 75¢ not long after my divorce. It was cheap, I'd never heard of it or the author and I really, really liked the title.
I'm guessing the reason it's not in major circulation, other than the poor reviews is it's rather dated.
But then, so is Pride and Prejudice, so it's down to mass-market appeal, I guess.
The book takes place at the time of David Koresh and the Waco debacle. I live in Texas, I remember turning off the tv and the burning building, taking my baby daughter outside to play and discussing the event with a neighbor. So, not ancient history, but not recent, either. I doubt many people give the nut job Koresh much thought these days.
Luna Stone has suffered some emotional problems. She's been anorexic as a result. I can personally say I've been there.
She's on her way to California to marry a man who by all accounts is perfect. And he may well be, but not for her.
She figures this out about halfway there, in Nevada. While there, she runs into the ghost of Tamsen Donner, a victim of starvation and cannibalism during the fateful Donner Party crossing into California.
She also meets a young Hispanic boy, the victim of the sex-slave trade and a nearly deaf theology student.
At that point, the novel does dwindle into the fantastical, but around the edges of the unbelievable, in a "it could still happen like that way."
A lot of people seem cheated by the ending and I don't get that at all. How else was it supposed to end? This book follows mostly realistic characters living their lives. They don't die in the end.
Do you know how your story is going to play out in the end? Are you dead yet? Of course not. It's a book about journeys, and the toll love takes on all of us in its various guises. Those sharp teeth.
So yeah, if you run across it for 75¢ like I did, I'd say it's worth it.
Actual Rating: 4
Format: Trade Paper
Source: library used book sale
Current ebook price: N/A
Opinion of Price: N/A
My Cost: $0.75
So, me? I liked it. Quite a bit, actually. I bought it at a library sale for 75¢ not long after my divorce. It was cheap, I'd never heard of it or the author and I really, really liked the title.
I'm guessing the reason it's not in major circulation, other than the poor reviews is it's rather dated.
But then, so is Pride and Prejudice, so it's down to mass-market appeal, I guess.
The book takes place at the time of David Koresh and the Waco debacle. I live in Texas, I remember turning off the tv and the burning building, taking my baby daughter outside to play and discussing the event with a neighbor. So, not ancient history, but not recent, either. I doubt many people give the nut job Koresh much thought these days.
Luna Stone has suffered some emotional problems. She's been anorexic as a result. I can personally say I've been there.
She's on her way to California to marry a man who by all accounts is perfect. And he may well be, but not for her.
She figures this out about halfway there, in Nevada. While there, she runs into the ghost of Tamsen Donner, a victim of starvation and cannibalism during the fateful Donner Party crossing into California.
She also meets a young Hispanic boy, the victim of the sex-slave trade and a nearly deaf theology student.
At that point, the novel does dwindle into the fantastical, but around the edges of the unbelievable, in a "it could still happen like that way."
A lot of people seem cheated by the ending and I don't get that at all. How else was it supposed to end? This book follows mostly realistic characters living their lives. They don't die in the end.
Do you know how your story is going to play out in the end? Are you dead yet? Of course not. It's a book about journeys, and the toll love takes on all of us in its various guises. Those sharp teeth.
So yeah, if you run across it for 75¢ like I did, I'd say it's worth it.
Actual Rating: 4
Format: Trade Paper
Source: library used book sale
Current ebook price: N/A
Opinion of Price: N/A
My Cost: $0.75
March 11, 2020
Another case of the right book at the right time, except I can’t imagine a time that this book wouldn’t hit the spot.
Refreshingly weird characters (Southern without the gothic or noir) in runaway situations that resolve eventually, to great satisfaction. I didn’t need all the Christian references either, as another reviewer pointed out, but the inclusion added mild comic diversion against the otherwise grim reprise of the Donner Party Story. And who doesn’t like a ghost story every now and then.
See? Something for everyone.
Refreshingly weird characters (Southern without the gothic or noir) in runaway situations that resolve eventually, to great satisfaction. I didn’t need all the Christian references either, as another reviewer pointed out, but the inclusion added mild comic diversion against the otherwise grim reprise of the Donner Party Story. And who doesn’t like a ghost story every now and then.
See? Something for everyone.
August 12, 2018
This is a story you want to be a part of, and about which you want to know more!
December 17, 2022
Deaf reader reviewing books with deaf characters. This book is listed on my ranked list of books with deaf characters.
First off, I nearly died with excitement when I saw the deaf character's name was Paul Cowan. I've never read a book with a character that shares my name, let alone a fellow deafie! But I've decided not to claim him as my kin because the deaf rep is inconsistent, all over the place, and often not well done at all. Let's get into it.
So, when main character Luna spots Paul, one of the first thing she notices after he puts his clothes on is his hearing aid. But this takes place after Deaf President Now (1988), so it doesn't make sense that the author describes a vacuum tube hearing aid rather than a transistor HA that Paul would have been prescribed at the time. And with his level of hearing loss, it's even more unlikely that the battery would have fit in his shirt pocket. Anyway, all Luna's fear of him dissipates when she realizes he is deaf, even though "there must be deaf rapists in the world.” She also considers that there is nothing "less sexy than a hearing aid.” Well, I say there's nothing less sexy than an ableist, but here we are.
We come to find out that Paul has only been deaf for a few months, following a construction accident. His dreams to attend seminary school have been crushed because he no longer feels comfortable with the amount of listening required. He explains he doesn’t feel part of the deaf community although he did learn to sign (apparently fluently? Despite only having been deaf around 4 or 5 months). He won’t preach in ASL or through closed captioning because, he says, in the middle ages he couldn’t have taken communion without speaking to the priest. An odd take, considering we are not in the middle ages. And his argument doesn't really hold up all that well when he is wearing hearing aids, which didn't exist in the middle ages. And yet he is still interested in working with teens with acquired deafness.
A few things of note:
-It's unrealistic that Paul can only hear Lunas voice in the car rather than the car engine/tires/rattling. In real life, it’s always the opposite, especially for people who haven’t trained long and hard in sound discrimination. Later he mentions that background noise (restaurant/casino) is a problem for conversation, which is ironic since he could hear Luna perfectly in the car, eh?
-Luna worries that if Paul goes off on his own he’ll get hit by a car, even though he, a grown adult, clearly made it there and lived for a while in the woods on his own safely.
-Paul can use a pay phone with no apparent difficulty, and can hear birds and identify the type. But he can't hear the creek or their own footsteps on the ground. Doubtful, especially as he later explains he can't hear high-pitched noises. What kinds of birds are you listening to, Paul?
-p. 202 is the first mention/hint of bilateral hearing aids, which is super strange as I thought he only wore one in his left ear.
-Paul’s HA battery falls out, but he can still hear Lunas whispering with “no trouble at all” by listening with his skin. Huh??? Did I miss speech therapy the day we were supposed to learn osmosis? Paul is constantly horny, by the way. To an annoying extent. Like, bro, can you focus please. Post-coital Paul can’t hear shit, so relies on lipreading, and needs repeats, which is realistic. But then he understands the word “binoculars” because he feels it vibrating through Luna's chest. Literally what the hell.
-Paul's HA battery is apparently infinite and indestructible. He never changes or charges it. He drops it onto wet rocks by a river and leaves it for a while, and it still works. Meanwhile, one drop of rain on my post-2015 HA and I have to make an appointment to have the whole thing replaced. I guess they don't make 'em like they used to?
Overall, a messy and more inaccurate than not representation of a deaf person. And he's not a likeable character, which makes it even harder to read.
Aside from the terrible deaf rep, I was also uncomfortable with the ableism and racism throughout the novel. When Luna ignores Steven during the cross country road trip, he demands at one point if she’s going to be “deaf and dumb” the entire way. He is constantly derogatory, ableist, racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic. Another thing that bothers me is the racial terms: "blacks," Hispanics, Asians, Indian (meaning Indigenous), “illegal Mexican aliens”, but Luna herself is "American," not white (making American synonymous with white). Blech.
First off, I nearly died with excitement when I saw the deaf character's name was Paul Cowan. I've never read a book with a character that shares my name, let alone a fellow deafie! But I've decided not to claim him as my kin because the deaf rep is inconsistent, all over the place, and often not well done at all. Let's get into it.
So, when main character Luna spots Paul, one of the first thing she notices after he puts his clothes on is his hearing aid. But this takes place after Deaf President Now (1988), so it doesn't make sense that the author describes a vacuum tube hearing aid rather than a transistor HA that Paul would have been prescribed at the time. And with his level of hearing loss, it's even more unlikely that the battery would have fit in his shirt pocket. Anyway, all Luna's fear of him dissipates when she realizes he is deaf, even though "there must be deaf rapists in the world.” She also considers that there is nothing "less sexy than a hearing aid.” Well, I say there's nothing less sexy than an ableist, but here we are.
We come to find out that Paul has only been deaf for a few months, following a construction accident. His dreams to attend seminary school have been crushed because he no longer feels comfortable with the amount of listening required. He explains he doesn’t feel part of the deaf community although he did learn to sign (apparently fluently? Despite only having been deaf around 4 or 5 months). He won’t preach in ASL or through closed captioning because, he says, in the middle ages he couldn’t have taken communion without speaking to the priest. An odd take, considering we are not in the middle ages. And his argument doesn't really hold up all that well when he is wearing hearing aids, which didn't exist in the middle ages. And yet he is still interested in working with teens with acquired deafness.
A few things of note:
-It's unrealistic that Paul can only hear Lunas voice in the car rather than the car engine/tires/rattling. In real life, it’s always the opposite, especially for people who haven’t trained long and hard in sound discrimination. Later he mentions that background noise (restaurant/casino) is a problem for conversation, which is ironic since he could hear Luna perfectly in the car, eh?
-Luna worries that if Paul goes off on his own he’ll get hit by a car, even though he, a grown adult, clearly made it there and lived for a while in the woods on his own safely.
-Paul can use a pay phone with no apparent difficulty, and can hear birds and identify the type. But he can't hear the creek or their own footsteps on the ground. Doubtful, especially as he later explains he can't hear high-pitched noises. What kinds of birds are you listening to, Paul?
-p. 202 is the first mention/hint of bilateral hearing aids, which is super strange as I thought he only wore one in his left ear.
-Paul’s HA battery falls out, but he can still hear Lunas whispering with “no trouble at all” by listening with his skin. Huh??? Did I miss speech therapy the day we were supposed to learn osmosis? Paul is constantly horny, by the way. To an annoying extent. Like, bro, can you focus please. Post-coital Paul can’t hear shit, so relies on lipreading, and needs repeats, which is realistic. But then he understands the word “binoculars” because he feels it vibrating through Luna's chest. Literally what the hell.
-Paul's HA battery is apparently infinite and indestructible. He never changes or charges it. He drops it onto wet rocks by a river and leaves it for a while, and it still works. Meanwhile, one drop of rain on my post-2015 HA and I have to make an appointment to have the whole thing replaced. I guess they don't make 'em like they used to?
Overall, a messy and more inaccurate than not representation of a deaf person. And he's not a likeable character, which makes it even harder to read.
Aside from the terrible deaf rep, I was also uncomfortable with the ableism and racism throughout the novel. When Luna ignores Steven during the cross country road trip, he demands at one point if she’s going to be “deaf and dumb” the entire way. He is constantly derogatory, ableist, racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic. Another thing that bothers me is the racial terms: "blacks," Hispanics, Asians, Indian (meaning Indigenous), “illegal Mexican aliens”, but Luna herself is "American," not white (making American synonymous with white). Blech.
March 18, 2011
This book is certainly not _Heading West_, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Every time I read a Doris Betts book, I always wonder how it is that she's not more widely read. Her authorial voice is both charming and poignant, and her heroines are both delightful and flawed.
Betts' novel follows protagonist Luna Stone, a technical artist and recovering anorectic, as she and her fiancee travel to California for his new job. Within the first few pages, it's obvious that their relationship is strained. Betts stretches this to dangerous ends through her language of consumption; where Luna shrinks literally and figuratively because of her sacrifices within her relationship, Steven grows. It's easy to get frustrated with Luna at the beginning of the novel, but soon she grows frustrated WITH you, and before you know it she leaves Steven high-and-dry at a Reno hotel. For me, this is one of the most satisfying moments of the entire novel.
In an effort to cleanse/find herself/find peace, Luna heads into the Reno wilderness where she meets Paul and Sam: Paul is a tortured theologian who enters the wilderness after his traumatic hearing loss, and Sam is an escapee from a child prostitution ring. I'll stop here for fear of spoiling the book, but know that its quite climactic.
The real charm of this novel--and the part that sucks you in as a reader--is traveling with Luna during her own self-discovery. She is a quirky heroine, to be sure, but you just can't help but like her. However, Betts never lets you forget that Luna is damaged goods: she spent time in a mental health facility, suffered from anorexia, and has a traumatic relationship with her father. On paper, that looks like a heavy-handed formula, but Betts pulls of Luna's character with aplomb. Creating characters that stick with you and pull at your heartstrings is tricky business, but all of Betts' novels do this wonderfully.
Additionally, Betts blends her philosophic moments with adventure more seamlessly in _The Sharp Teeth of Love_ than she does in any of her previous novels. Whereas _The River to Pickle Beach_ and _Heading West_ are can be almost frenetic in their movements forward, _The Sharp Teeth of Love_ rolicks along and carries the reader with it. If you've been turned off by Betts before, it's worth giving this book a shot.
I love this book. I just LOVE it. I hope you will, too.
Betts' novel follows protagonist Luna Stone, a technical artist and recovering anorectic, as she and her fiancee travel to California for his new job. Within the first few pages, it's obvious that their relationship is strained. Betts stretches this to dangerous ends through her language of consumption; where Luna shrinks literally and figuratively because of her sacrifices within her relationship, Steven grows. It's easy to get frustrated with Luna at the beginning of the novel, but soon she grows frustrated WITH you, and before you know it she leaves Steven high-and-dry at a Reno hotel. For me, this is one of the most satisfying moments of the entire novel.
In an effort to cleanse/find herself/find peace, Luna heads into the Reno wilderness where she meets Paul and Sam: Paul is a tortured theologian who enters the wilderness after his traumatic hearing loss, and Sam is an escapee from a child prostitution ring. I'll stop here for fear of spoiling the book, but know that its quite climactic.
The real charm of this novel--and the part that sucks you in as a reader--is traveling with Luna during her own self-discovery. She is a quirky heroine, to be sure, but you just can't help but like her. However, Betts never lets you forget that Luna is damaged goods: she spent time in a mental health facility, suffered from anorexia, and has a traumatic relationship with her father. On paper, that looks like a heavy-handed formula, but Betts pulls of Luna's character with aplomb. Creating characters that stick with you and pull at your heartstrings is tricky business, but all of Betts' novels do this wonderfully.
Additionally, Betts blends her philosophic moments with adventure more seamlessly in _The Sharp Teeth of Love_ than she does in any of her previous novels. Whereas _The River to Pickle Beach_ and _Heading West_ are can be almost frenetic in their movements forward, _The Sharp Teeth of Love_ rolicks along and carries the reader with it. If you've been turned off by Betts before, it's worth giving this book a shot.
I love this book. I just LOVE it. I hope you will, too.
March 31, 2016
I'm suddenly a Doris Betts fan. Her voice is tough yet poetic, contemporary yet reflective. My main issues are with improbabilities in her plots. At the beginning of this novel, I admired her study of the deterioration of an engaged couple's relationship. You say to the woman (the hero), "Don't you SEE? He's not the one for you!" even as she vacillates, persuades herself that she was meant to be the wife of this astonishingly handsome but prigishly selfish guy. I liked her developing friendship with the homeless kid, Sam, although the attachment did seem a little to easy on his part, after what he'd been through (especially his acceptance of Lola's boyfriend, Paul). I am not sure what the deeper meaning of Lola's "relationship" with the spirit of Tamsen is, but I liked her descriptions of the ghost. It must speak to sacrifice, and to different kinds of "hunger" (Tamsen was a member of the ill-fated Donner party, and Lola is a recovering anorexic)--but I'd have to think about it more to get farther than that. I do know that Doris Betts regards religion as a wellspring of her work. She usually doesn't hit you over the head with it, but in this book, there is much (too much?) discussion of doctrine, faith. Hmmm...and what does the title mean?--which is *not* drawn from the epigraph from Robert Frost--and what does *that* mean, in relation to this novel?
Okay, what didn't I like about the plot? Two glaring improbabilities: that Lola and Paul would just happen to be on the same highway, in the exact same place and time, as the boy's kidnappers. I did like the device of Sam signalling to them by drawing the moons in the car's dust---but couldn't Betts have created a more likely trail leading the couple to him than this totally fortuitous crossing of paths? There *is* mention of the concept of "synchronicity" in the book--but, this just strained credulity even more than the appearance of a ghost--which is "unrealistic" anyway. The second improbability: that Lola and Paul's passion would overcome the extreme anxiety and physical pain of their desperate escape and search for Sam, the young boy---and they'd stop, oblivious, and have cheerful sex---where Sam or The Bad Guys could find them?!.... I understand that desperation can trigger other strong emotions, but it just didn't work here for me. The many passages of good writing, and the complex female characters Betts creates, make up for these shortfalls, and I'll continue to investigate her work.
Okay, what didn't I like about the plot? Two glaring improbabilities: that Lola and Paul would just happen to be on the same highway, in the exact same place and time, as the boy's kidnappers. I did like the device of Sam signalling to them by drawing the moons in the car's dust---but couldn't Betts have created a more likely trail leading the couple to him than this totally fortuitous crossing of paths? There *is* mention of the concept of "synchronicity" in the book--but, this just strained credulity even more than the appearance of a ghost--which is "unrealistic" anyway. The second improbability: that Lola and Paul's passion would overcome the extreme anxiety and physical pain of their desperate escape and search for Sam, the young boy---and they'd stop, oblivious, and have cheerful sex---where Sam or The Bad Guys could find them?!.... I understand that desperation can trigger other strong emotions, but it just didn't work here for me. The many passages of good writing, and the complex female characters Betts creates, make up for these shortfalls, and I'll continue to investigate her work.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 18, 2014
I don’t know what just happened. This is one weird little story that’s all over the map and I couldn’t put down. Everything in the book that would normally turn me off kept my attention instead. It’s not like I can really give it high marks. But it’s so unlike other things I’ve read that I think it’s going to be one I remember.
I want to see what’s stuck with me in six months.
I want to see what’s stuck with me in six months.
August 5, 2011
Contemporary heroine in an unusual and rich story. Betts is a fine novelist with a great heart for story. Love her characters, and the situations are startlingly believable.
Would love to see this in movie form.
Funny and touching
Would love to see this in movie form.
Funny and touching
May 16, 2008
Woman running away, boy with fingers scarred, deaf man camping. The man and woman rescue the boy.
July 25, 2009
Don't bother.
September 4, 2013
Full of surprises, well written, some intriguing themes. Loved the Sierra setting for much of the book.
July 12, 2014
The plot was too far fetched and often contrived, but a quick read.
November 25, 2016
Saving this one for you Ingrid!!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews