Milk Teeth

by Helene Bukowski, Jennifer Calleja (Translator)

Overview

"A gripping debut novel... there's no shortage of climate fiction these days, but this one is distinguished by its striking vision." —Publishers Weekly
Skalde writes her thoughts on pieces of paper, making new discoveries and revelations, and finding scraps with which to understand her limited world. Her mother Edith tells her little, preferring the solitude of her room. Their house is full of silence, and secrets.
Skalde has only ever known life in the territory, a terrain of farms and forest cut off from the rest of the world. They are isolated further, as decades since Edith’s arrival in the territory she is still viewed as an outsider by their remaining neighbors. A heavy fog hangs over the territory, Skalde has never seen blue in the sky her entire childhood― but one day the fog dissipates, and is replaced by an oppressive, perpetual heat. The territory dries out, and its people become increasingly erratic, and desperate.
When Skalde finds a girl called Meisis in the forest, Skalde instantly feels she must care for her and brings her in. They form a family unit, in spite of Skalde’s increasing frustrations and anger with Edith and the urgent need to keep Meisis hidden. Meisis’s presence means there has been a serious breach in security for the territory, and soon neighbors find a way to blame Meisis’s arrival on other changes.
Beautifully written in immersive, spare prose, Helene Bukowski’s debut novel is about what it means to care for one another at the end of the world, about living with the impacts of climate change, and nationalism and the way we view “outsiders.” Jen Calleja’s translation from German is a lively rendition of this modern-day fairytale, of three women living on the brink.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781951213350
Publisher:	The Unnamed Press
Publication date:	09/20/2021
Pages:	223
Sales rank:	695,610
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Helene Bukowski, born in Berlin in 1993, is studying creative writing and cultural journalism in Hildesheim. She is the co-author of the documentary film Zehn Wochen Sommer, which won a Grimme Special Cultural Award in 2015. Her writing has appeared in various journals and anthologies, and she was the co-editor of BELLA triste.

Jen Calleja is the author of I’m Afraid That’s All We’ve Got Time For (Prototype), Goblins (Rough Trade Books) and Serious Justice (Test Centre). She is a literary translator from German of Marion Poschmann, Wim Wenders, Kerstin Hensel, Michelle Steinbeck, Gregor Hens, and more. Her translation of The Pine Islands was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2019.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"In Milk Teeth, Helene Bukowski has created a world as eerie, unsettling and immersive as that of Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream. Her prose is as spare as the climate-change dystopia she depicts: harsh, unforgiving, and rife with social tension—but dotted with pockets of care. Come for the propulsive mystery, stay for the tenderness pulsing underneath it." —Jessica Gross, author of Hysteria

“Helene Bukowski has written a modern-day fairy-tale. Warm-hearted yet not sentimental. Familiar and yet mysterious. For a few days I lived there, in that old house by the forest with Skalde, Edith and Meisis, and when it was over I had to be wrenched out of the door by force. Rarely have characters taken such hold of my heart.” —Philipp Winkler, author of Hooligan

Editorial Reviews

07/12/2021

In Bukowski’s gripping debut, a woman attempts to raise a child in a near future dramatically altered by climate change. People’s bodies have changed, too. Austere Edith, fully grown, still has “milk teeth,” or baby teeth. She lives with her daughter Skalde in a withered landscape in what seems to be total solitude— until it’s revealed that neighbors do exist, and are hostile. The neighbors’ distrust of Edith and Skalde increases when Skalde, now in her teens, takes in a child named Meisis she finds in the forest, who appears to be at the age when she would expect to lose her milk teeth. The girl’s arrival and her red hair, which is alien to the small and highly isolated community, prompts a series of disputes among the superstitious members, who blame Meisis’s arrival for the disappearance of two girls from the community. As Skalde’s attachment to Meisis grows, she makes a life-changing decision. The narrative is reliably tense if sometimes overheated with red herrings that add suspense without driving the plot, and Bukowski’s surreal descriptions of the landscape are exceptional (“The fog has swallowed up the sea. It stands like a wall, there, where the beach begins”). There’s no shortage of climate fiction these days, but this one is distinguished by its striking vision. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"With dashes of folk horror, cli-fi, and post-apocalyptic influences, Bukowski crafts a narrative that is somehow both propulsive and elegantly spare. A memorable entry into the dystopian-literature canon from a young German writer to watch." —Kirkus Reviews 

"Like Sophie Macintosh in The Water Cure or Diane Cook in The New Wilderness, Helene Bukowski imagines a pocket landscape where the concerns of our world can be contained and considered, a defamiliarized place that skews increasingly uncanny without ever becoming unrecognizable. Written with precision and poise, Milk Teeth is a moving depiction of survival and perseverance, and of how we might choose new families and communities in the face of an increasingly hostile world." —Matt Bell, author of Appleseed

"Bukowski’s dystopia is at once vivid and ominous... Bukowski confronts daunting issues but never gives in to despair. Ultimately, her debut succeeds because it’s populated by characters who feel authentic—people who are duly frightened yet heroically normal in the face of cascading crises." —Kevin Canfield, Words Without Borders

"Milk Teeth is a novel with a lingering taste, one that weighs on the soul. It asks introspection of us, drawing attention to the cataclysms that daunt our own world even through the imagined, fictive realm. It advocates for responsibility instead of blindness, knowledge instead of ignorance, and in the realization of the fact that there may no longer be easy answers for our problems, it holds up a mirror so that we may confront our worst instincts."
—Anna Rumsby, Asymptote Journal      

"In Milk Teeth, Helene Bukowski has created a world as eerie, unsettling and immersive as that of Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream. Her prose is as spare as the climate-change dystopia she depicts: harsh, unforgiving, and rife with social tension—but dotted with pockets of care. Come for the propulsive mystery, stay for the tenderness pulsing underneath it."
—Jessica Gross, author of Hysteria     

"Milk Teeth makes for a bravura read. It’s at once a harrowing example of climate fiction and a work about a small community in isolation—a book that feels plausibly speculative and that plays out with the occasionally nightmarish logic of a fable. Even so, the psychology of Bukowski’s characters feels thoroughly realistic, and that in turn gives this novel even more power. Can a novel feel both inevitable and unpredictable? This one pulls it off." —Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders

From the Publisher

2021-09-01
The appearance of an outsider disrupts the lives of two women, a mother and daughter, living in an isolated, apocalyptic environment.

Edith and Skalde live in "the territory," a landscape blighted by oppressive heat. Most large animals have died off, though dogs are still pets and rabbits remain as one of the only sources of meat. Skalde, the book’s sole narrator, tends to their potato patch and does her best to grow up in the face of Edith’s indifference (Edith spends days on end lying on the couch or in the bathtub) and cruelty, both emotional and physical. Now Skalde has only her writings to keep her company. It hasn’t always been this way: From her childhood, Skalde remembers fog, damp weather, and Edith’s attention. Although they are not alone in the territory, the few other inhabitants tend to steer clear of them for reasons that Skalde doesn’t fully understand. She is resigned to their isolation, though; the one bridge to the mainland was deliberately blown up years before to keep the territory residents safe from interlopers. That’s why it shocks Skalde to come across a young girl with red hair—a clear sign that she doesn’t belong to the territory. When Skalde decides to take the girl, Meisis, back to the home she shares with Edith, she has no idea how much this will threaten the territory’s residents and how quickly whatever order was found there will unravel. Bukowski has written a lean, muscular book that dispenses with much worldbuilding or exposition, but the book’s taut shape seems to fit with Skalde’s fiercely guarded self-sufficiency. With dashes of folk horror, cli-fi, and post-apocalyptic influences, Bukowski crafts a narrative that is somehow both propulsive and elegantly spare.

A memorable entry into the dystopian-literature canon from a young German writer to watch.

Kirkus Reviews