posted on 03 Oct 2016

The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce

I have to admit that this isn’t the kind of novel I’d normally pick up and certainly not one I’d expect to enjoy. The jacket promises a encounter with the ‘supernatural’ and this is usually the signal for me run a mile but, on this occasion I wanted to give it a fair crack of the whip because it had been recommended to us by a reader of the Letterpress Project facebook site  and we like to keep faith with our supporters. And, I have to say, I’m glad I did because it was a much richer experience than I’d anticipated.

Graham Joyce sadly died at the very young age of 59 in 2014 but the Leicester-based author has quite a solid reputation and a very dedicated fan-base.  Wikipedia describes his writing as ‘speculative fiction’ which I take to mean something that walks a line between realism, fantasy, horror and science fiction – genre-bending  might be another way of thinking about what he produces.

Actually this turns out to be both a useful description of The Tooth Fairy and also, ultimately, an inadequate one. This is the story of the frightening power of the changes growing up and adolescence can wreak on young boys in particular and the way in which the world can shift quite unexpectedly from the cosy and predictable, the safe and secure to the dangerous and treacherous and with life-changing  and lasting consequences.

It’s also a story of friendship. Three boys – Sam, Terry and Clive – are growing up in Coventry in the 1960s and, despite their very different backgrounds, their childhood and teenage years are bound together by their sense of solidarity but also by a series of tragedies and disasters that befall them. Joyce is extraordinarily skilful in never making the narrative clumsy or obvious – what happens to the boys may be a result of a malicious fate or a hostile universe or it may just be the consequence of raging hormones and the treacherous territory of the adolescent years.

The possibility of either explanation – hormones or hostile universe – is made concrete in the central narrative of Sam who, when he is 8 and after losing a tooth, one night has the misfortune to see the Tooth Fairy (who normally remains hidden from view to the ‘normal’ human world) and discovers that as a result of this misfortune both he and the Fairy are now bound together in some kind of symbiosis. From this point onwards Sam sees the world through the prism of his relationship with this spirit which is by turns vindictive, vicious, seductive, male, female, vengeful  and, most importantly, possessive. The existence or non-existence of the Tooth Fairy is also the subject of Sam's other bizzare long-term relationship - with his jaded and ultimately useless psychiatrist.

What becomes clear quite rapidly is that the extraordinary power that sex – and unrequited lust – has in how the lives of the boys develop. When Clive’s  sister Linda grows from a gawky girl to glamorous and beautiful young woman and when the troubled but desirable Alice joins the gang the boys find their world and their emotions in turmoil. The sexual tension that runs like a seam throughout the book is added to and curiously enhanced by the guilt the boys share collectively over their part in the supposed murder of a unpleasant and debauched young scout whilst on an outward-bound adventure.

Amidst all of this and as adult lives turn bad and the outside world continues to disappoint, Sam sees the malevolent hand of the Tooth Fairy always waiting to contaminate his world, his friends and his family. He, and only he, has bought her into the world and he, and only he, is responsible for her meddling.

But, is this Fairy real or is it a manifestation of Sam’s psychological state? Again Joyce is cunning because he gives us enough evidence for both interpretations – there are times when the Fairy seems to be a real world phenomenon witnessed and experienced by other people and there are times when it’s clearly an expression of Sam’s repressed emotions.

By the end of the book the boys are ready to move on, to make the transition to the adult world and Sam has learned to embrace his Tooth Fairy – figuratively and literally. That’s not to say that the book ends with everything wrapped up and happy ever after. All of the boys are left scarred, emotionally and physically, by their transition through adolescence and although they set off on a new phase of their life it’s by no means with a clean slate.

At a superficial level this can be read as a piece of ‘speculative fiction’ – something that dabbles with illusion, reality and the role of the supernatural but that would be a very one-dimensional way of interpreting what is in fact a complex book that confronts the often hidden terrors of growing up.

 

Terry Potter

October 2016.