That sock in the door knob hole is a ploy for privacy so kids can sniff solvents. From Tagaq, it seems to come effortlessly and the result is an almost perfectly drawn Arctic world, as seen through the eyes of an extremely sensitive and curious child, then teenager, who has lived and felt it. It’s the stuff that makes creative writing teachers swoon. Tagaq’s writing is close and careful and unbelievably concrete: blue foam insulation blowing across the tundra, a boy carrying a gas can strapped to his head “Inuk style,” pilot biscuits and lard for supper, yucky high school teachers (“getting old is so gross”), an old sock shoved where a doorknob used to be. I could fill a whole review just quoting passages like this one. There’s no better description of scent in the Arctic than in Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth: “The air is so clean you can smell the difference between smooth rock and jagged.
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