The disquietude in Graham Joyce's coming-of-age tale is that of having too much power as a child--the kind of power that turns your slightest wishes into mayhem. This power is granted to the rather ordinary and fearful member (neither the smartest nor the strongest) of a trio of friends growing up in small-town England by his stinky and enigmatic night visitor, the Tooth Fairy. The charm of this British Fantasy Award-winning novel is in his subtle and unsentimental portrait of a supernaturally benighted childhood. As Ellen Datlow writes in Omni, "Joyce immediately hooks his readers from the very first page with a small sharp shock and holds the reader with engaging characters and an air of menace. This tooth fairy is ... mischievous and destructive, representing our own worst aspects." --Fiona Webster


From Publishers Weekly
An unlikely sprite assumes a sinister incarnation in this exceptional supernatural novel about a troublesome but endearing trio of boys coming of age in the English Midlands in the 1960s. Seven-year-old Sam first lays eyes on the Tooth Fairy?oddly dressed and smelling of horse's sweat and chamomile?in the middle of the night after he has stashed a tooth under his pillow. Over the years, the fairy becomes a fixture in his life. No one else can see or hear this odd creature, who is sometimes male, sometimes female and alternately coy, cruel and cuddly. Even without this personal demon, Sam would get into plenty of trouble with his chums: Clive, a "gifted child" who wins a NASA (yes, the American NASA) science contest at age six but longs to be normal; Terry, an affable lad whose life is plagued by catastrophe; and Alice, the fetching, knowing girl who drives the boys wild with lust. Joyce (Requiem) engagingly describes the boys' childhood experiences?sampling drugs, toying with explosives, worrying over acne?and carefully portrays their childlike stoicism in the face of several horrifying tragedies. Sam worries that the Tooth Fairy, who grows menacing and sexually demanding, is responsible for those calamities. The novel's appeal lies primarily in the three boys, who are charmingly mischievous, naive and hormone-driven, portrayed by Joyce with a gentle wit. No less compelling, though, is the fairy, a fleur de mal from childhood's secret garden whose perfume seduces Sam and the reader alike into a fertile, startling nightmare. (Mar.) FYI: The Tooth Fairy has won the 1997 British Fantasy Award for best novel.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Sam's childhood in England during the 1960s is relatively routine until he loses his first tooth. That night he wakes up to find a strange creature crouching in his room: the Tooth Fairy. Unfortunately, this isn't a benevolent creature of light but a primal thing full of passions and chthonic energies. What's worse is that it is very unhappy that it has been discovered. Sam and the creature begin a tempestuous relationship that takes them through the rigors of childhood and adolescence. Sometimes the creature acts as Sam's ally, other times his tormentor, and occasionally even his lover. Like his Requiem (1996), Graham's Tooth Fairy explores the relationship between a human and a being that may be real or a construct of the subconscious. This is no idealization of childhood; it is a look at the fantasies, the sins, and the rough-and-tumble of growing up. Eric Robbins


From Kirkus Reviews
From the author of Requiem (1996): a story about a boy growing up in England in the 1960s--with one singular difference: He's haunted by a demonic Tooth Fairy that only he can see, but whose effects spill over into his family and friends. When seven-year-old Sam Southall of Redstone, near Coventry, loses a tooth, he's visited that night by a sinister, rank- smelling, foul-mouthed, mercurial Tooth Fairy; the Tooth Fairy, in turn, is astonished that Sam can see him. During his unpredictable visits, he quickly teaches Sam to make mischief at school, then insists that Sam have his friend Terry sleep over. That same night, Terry's father shoots his wife, his other children, and himself. Prompted by the Tooth Fairy's sexual teasing, Sam learns to masturbate and discovers girls--especially Alice, of the local horse-riding club. Soon, because Alice vandalized the club's hut and blamed the deed on Terry and their friend Clive, the boys are forced to join the Scouts to prove their innocence. During a Scouts night, a scary game gets out of hand: Sam kills a bully as he prepares to rape Clive, and in a panic the boys conceal the Dead Scout and swear to say nothing. Despite the Tooth Fairy's taunts, the Dead Scout's disappearance passes unremarked. Then the Tooth Fairy, now female and thoroughly enticing, threatens to expose Sam unless he demands a telescope for Christmas. He gets her wish, and both he and she are fascinated by the stars. Finally, the Dead Scout shows up--alive and well--and the friends become hysterical with relief. At the close, Alice pairs off with Terry; Sam realizes that his own need calls up the Tooth Fairy; he and she make love, symbolically shedding their skins, although Sam, preparing to go to college to study astrophysics, recognizes that he must let her go. Sharp, freshly imagined, and evocative work, by turns wrenching, funny, and disquieting. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Review
"Brilliantly original." -Sunday Times (London)

"An unforgettable story set in the strange and foreign land that is your own childhood-that place where splendor and horror, memory and fantasy, collide. You'll be turning the pages and wishing you could go on doing so long after the book has ended. A magnificent achievement." -Karen Joy Fowler

"Brilliant and unclassifiable, The Tooth Fairy is by turns tender, nightmarish, and hilarious, with hard-won wisdom and a rare sense of time and place, of lives truly lived....I won't bother saying Graham Joyce deserves to find a wide audience in America; rather, I think the American audience deserves to discover him." -Jonathan Lethem



Review
"Brilliantly original." -Sunday Times (London)

"An unforgettable story set in the strange and foreign land that is your own childhood-that place where splendor and horror, memory and fantasy, collide. You'll be turning the pages and wishing you could go on doing so long after the book has ended. A magnificent achievement." -Karen Joy Fowler

"Brilliant and unclassifiable, The Tooth Fairy is by turns tender, nightmarish, and hilarious, with hard-won wisdom and a rare sense of time and place, of lives truly lived....I won't bother saying Graham Joyce deserves to find a wide audience in America; rather, I think the American audience deserves to discover him." -Jonathan Lethem



Book Description
Sam and his friends are like any normal gang of normal young boys. Roaming wild around the outskirts of their car-factory town. Daring adults to challenge their freedom.

Until the day Sam wakes to find the Tooth Fairy sitting on the edge of his bed. Not the benign figure of childhood myth, but an enigmatic presence that both torments and seduces him, changing his life forever.



From the Publisher
"An eerie and quite lovely coming-of-age tale." --The Washington Post "Brilliantly original." --Sunday Times (London) "An unforgettable story set in the strange and foreign land that is your own childhood--that place where splendor and horror, memory and fantasy, collide. You'll be turning the pages and wishing you could go on doing so long after the book has ended. A magnificent achievement." --Karen Joy Fowler "Brilliant and unclassifiable, The Tooth Fairy is by turns tender, nightmarish, and hilarious, with hard-won wisdom and a rare sense of time and place, of loves truly lived....I won't bother saying Graham Joyce deserves to find a wide audience in America; rather, I think the American audience deserves to discover him." --Jonathan Lethem

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review

Its been a long wait for American lovers of the macabre. Graham Joyce's disturbing, mesmerizing dark fantasy "The Tooth Fairy" knocked Britain for a loop in 1996 when it was first released. It went on to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and all the while the United States has been patiently waiting for it to make its stateside appearance.

That time has come.

"The Tooth Fairy" lives up to its hype and should have little problem becoming an instant classic. Joyce's coming-of-age tale mixed with a pitch-black fairy tale is chilling, touching, and ultimately unforgettable. It's as if the Brothers Grimm reinterpreted Stephen King's novella "The Body" (which went on to become the basis for the film "Stand by Me").

In the English Midlands of the 1960s, three young boys are grappling with the typical trials and tribulations of coming-of-age. But one of them, Sam Southall, has a particularly unique problem. One night after putting a tooth under his pillow, he awakes to find a disgusting, horrifying beast in his bedroom. Identifying itself as the Tooth Fairy, it is as shocked as Sam to find that Sam can see it, since it has always been able to move invisibly through the human world.

Thus begins the complex friendship between Sam and this beast. The Tooth Fairy is at turns friendly, violent, and sexual. One moment he can be showing Sam the wonders of the constellations with a telescope, and the next he can be showing him how to masturbate in the middle of Sunday School class. Or, if the Tooth Fairy is in a particularly dark mood, he may just physically hurt Sam for telling others about the Tooth Fairy.

What makes the book truly frightening, however, is that the Tooth Fairy is an extremely complex being, capable of developing very human emotions and acting on them just as irrationally as we might -- or more so. Over the years, as Sam approaches his teenage years, the Tooth Fairy develops an obsession with him. Appealing to Sam's pending puberty, the Tooth Fairy alters itself into a repugnant, but oddly erotic, female form. And in its efforts to keep Sam to itself, it has the terrifying tendency to hurt -- or even kill -- anyone who threatens Sam's happiness. And pity the person who dares to compete with the Tooth Fairy for Sam's affections -- such as, perhaps, the pretty tomboy who is the cause of jealousies between the three friends.

"The Tooth Fairy" is quiet, subtle horror at its finest. Joyce is a master at luring you into a false sense of security. The novel even opens with a peaceful scene of the young boys dipping their feet into the local pond. But, not two paragraphs into the book, tragedy strikes.

Clive was on the far side of the green pond, torturing a king-crested newt. Sam and Terry languished under a vast oak, offering their chubby white feet to the dark water. The sprawling oak leaned out across the mirroring pond, dappling the water's surface with clear reflections of leaf and branch and of acorns ripening slowly in verdant cups.

It was high summer. Pigeons cooed softly in the trees, and Clive's family picnicked nearby. Two older boys fished for perch about thirty yards away. Sam saw the pike briefly. At first he thought he was looking at a submerged log. It hung inches below the surface, utterly still, like something suspended in ice. Green and gold, it was a phantom, a spirit from another world. Sam tried to utter a warning, but the apparition of the pike had him mesmerized. It flashed at the surface of the water as it came up to take away, in a single bite, the two smallest toes of Terry's left foot.

Joyce knows that horror in fiction should be unpredictable and sudden -- just like in real life. The millions who feasted this winter on the silver screen's "Scream 2" might be disappointed in the low body count of "The Tooth Fairy", but Joyce smartly realizes that keeping the suspense concentrated in a few, well-timed scenes is more effective than a splatterfest. This is the ultimate fairy tale for adults.

The only problem one might have while reading a book this good is a nagging fear that Joyce may not be able to pull off an ending that measures up to the brilliance that preceded it. Not to worry -- just when you think the author has painted himself into a corner with the complex plotting, he brings "The Tooth Fairy" to a thoroughly satisfying head. Joyce is already one of Britain's hottest sensations. Watch for him to soon have an equally devoted following in the United States. --Matt Schwartz

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Sam and his friends are like any gang of normal young boys. Roaming wild around the outskirts of their car-factory town. Daring adults to challenge their freedom. Until the day Sam wakes to find the Tooth Fairy sitting on the edge of his bed. Not the benign figure of childhood myth, but an enigmatic presence that both torments and seduces him, changing his life forever. Is she real or just a figment of his turbulent imagination? All Sam knows, as he painfully grows from childhood to adolescence, is that she is never very far away...

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

An unlikely sprite assumes a sinister incarnation in this exceptional supernatural novel about a troublesome but endearing trio of boys coming of age in the English Midlands in the 1960s. Seven-year-old Sam first lays eyes on the Tooth Fairyoddly dressed and smelling of horse's sweat and chamomilein the middle of the night after he has stashed a tooth under his pillow. Over the years, the fairy becomes a fixture in his life. No one else can see or hear this odd creature, who is sometimes male, sometimes female and alternately coy, cruel and cuddly. Even without this personal demon, Sam would get into plenty of trouble with his chums: Clive, a "gifted child" who wins a NASA (yes, the American NASA) science contest at age six but longs to be normal; Terry, an affable lad whose life is plagued by catastrophe; and Alice, the fetching, knowing girl who drives the boys wild with lust. Joyce (Requiem) engagingly describes the boys' childhood experiencessampling drugs, toying with explosives, worrying over acneand carefully portrays their childlike stoicism in the face of several horrifying tragedies. Sam worries that the Tooth Fairy, who grows menacing and sexually demanding, is responsible for those calamities. The novel's appeal lies primarily in the three boys, who are charmingly mischievous, nave and hormone-driven, portrayed by Joyce with a gentle wit. No less compelling, though, is the fairy, a fleur de mal from childhood's secret garden whose perfume seduces Sam and the reader alike into a fertile, startling nightmare. (Mar.) FYI: The Tooth Fairy has won the 1997 British Fantasy Award for best novel. (PW best book of 1998)

VOYA - Bette Ammon

Sam's childhood seems typical as he and his two best friends grow up in 1960s England. All this changes when Sam loses his first tooth and is visited by an out-of-the-ordinary Tooth Fairy. This creepy, nasty, and mostly nocturnal creature calls upon Sam regularly throughout his childhood and adolescence. She feeds his fears, capitalizes on his guilt, and sometimes seems a friend and lover. Although Sam is the only one who can see the Tooth Fairy, she guides many of his choices and emotions and haunts his nights, at times seductive and always demanding. This dark coming-of-age fantasy provides a compelling look at a boy's (and later a young man's) transition to adolescence fraught with fear, guilt, and excitement. The reader comes to know all the players and will marvel at the accurate portrayals of friendship, betrayal, romance, and familial horror. Mature fans of King and Koontz will appreciate the powerful parable and memorable characters. VOYA Codes: 4Q 4P S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses, Broad general YA appeal, Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).

David Soyka - SF Site

...The Tooth Fairy is a must read...The plot twists and turns, and more than a few times leads you places you don't quite expect.

Jenny Blackford - The New York Review of Science Fiction

I recommend this novel highly.

Hank Wagner - darkecho.com

Seven-year-old Sam Southall awakens the night he loses his first tooth and encounters a strange visitor. He surprises the odd little creature, who, after recovering its composure, reveals itself as the Tooth Fairy of legend. Thus begins a relationship which endures until Sam leaves for college, a strange, touching, sometimes dangerous association that adds spice and terror to Sam's otherwise normal existence. The Tooth Fairy, whose appearance, demeanor and sex change constantly, accompanies Sam on his journey through adolescence, sharing his triumphs and tragedies, even ushering him into manhood with his first sexual experience. Along the way, the he/she/it protects Sam, but also exposes him to a variety of dangers; the mercurial creature is by turns adversarial and supportive, giving the novel a certain edginess.

From the outset, Joyce stresses the uncertainty of life. One of the more horrifying events in the novel takes place well before the Tooth Fairy appears. In the book's opening scene, one of Sam's friends is attacked by a pike as he dangles his feet in a stream. The boy loses a toe, and is destined to walk with a limp for the rest of his life. The attack, frightening because of its suddenness and harshness, is a stunning reminder of how quickly lives can change. One minute you are safe, bullshitting with your friends, the next you are being hurried off to the emergency room. It also points out that no one is in control -- neither children nor their parents.

Joyce's point is that the only sure thing in life is change--he expresses this sentiment perfectly, using Sam as a prism. Who better to portray the ambiguity of life than a teenager, whose perceptions change along with his body? Joyce uses his innate understanding of childhood to great advantage, creating a story that can be taken as a supernatural tale or as a psychological study of a troubled adolescent grappling with impending adulthood.

Joyce returns to the theme of ambiguity again and again. Consider, for example, the Tooth Fairy's gender or lack thereof -- its form varies with Sam's age and mood. Besides its physical malleability, it also assumes a striking variety of roles, acting in turn as friend, foe, prophet, protector, lover, and conscience. While it often taunts and threatens him, it also helps him handle bullies, protects him from crazy adults, and initiates him into the wonders of sex. In short, it is whatever Sam needs it to be.

There is also the question of whether the Tooth Fairy exists at all -- the book permits either interpretation. Interestingly, the Tooth Fairy appears to Sam soon after a traumatic event at school. One might say that it appeared in response to the event, perhaps as Sam's coping mechanism. Thereafter, its visits coincide with the turbulent events in Sam's life, suggesting that it may all be in his mind. Cunningly, Joyce has Sam visit a psychiatrist, to whom he confesses all about the Tooth Fairy. The psychiatrist, bent on fulfilling his own expectations, blithely ignores Sam, choosing instead to pepper him with inane questions about his sexual urges.