Milk Teeth

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I still haven’t got around to reading Jessica Andrews’ debut, Saltwater, leapfrogging over the copy on my TBR to read her new novel. An intimate exploration of class, precarity, sex, power and, above all, of the fragility and exuberance of love. What Andrews does with Milk Teeth, as she does in Saltwater too, is give us a protagonist who is clearly from a region, the north east, the same region that Andrews herself is from, and make that very real. I think what I mean is, there were certain passages that felt slight too navel gazing and, dare I say it, overly written?

The plot is non-chronological, flipping between our unnamed protagonist’s present and past relationships as she attempts to come to terms with her own wants from life.

Glad to be alive, and hungry for more – more travel to European cities, more delicious food, more books to be read, more of this terrible-wonderful-unpredictable life. And her - much like she does her friends and the man she is enraptured by - pushing us a safe distance away.

She also navigates the fear of living with regrets, making bad choices and not living up to your potential. As for a new book that I'm excited about, Jessica Andrews' Milk Teeth - her follow-up to award-winning debut novel Saltwater - would have to be it.I watch you wheel your suitcase onto the train in your black boots and dirty black jacket, black curls falling into your eyes like an alley cat.