Milk Teeth

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. [em](Sept.) [/em]