Milk Teeth

'Consuming and sexy' The Times

'Unusually raw . . . so honest and hopeful' Financial Times

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A girl grows up in the north-east of England amid scarcity, fearing her own desires and feeling undeserving of love. Years later, living in tiny rented rooms and working in noisy bars across London and Paris, she meets someone who offers her a new way to experience the world.

But when he invites her to join him in Barcelona, the promise of care makes her uneasy. In the shimmering Mediterranean heat, she is faced with both pleasure and shame, and must find out if she is able to change.

'Addictive, immediate, brilliant' Helen Mort

'A sharp and beguiling love story . . . Milk Teeth is a transporting, gorgeous novel' Independent

Jessica Andrews's first novel, Saltwater, was wonderful. The follow-up, Milk Teeth, is even better. A story of young love and desire that's full of the most gorgeous writing. -- Alex Preston, Fiction to Look Out for in 2022 Observer
Addictive, immediate, brilliant. Jessica Andrews offers a profound take on the ways our bodies are policed, on class, escapism and losing yourself in others -- Helen Mort
Milk Teeth spills over with care, truth and desire. Andrews makes the case for a life lived abundantly and ardently, full of sensation and pleasure, risk and safety. -- Yara Rodrigues Fowler
Heady, sweaty, sexy, salient. I devoured it -- Abigail Tarttelin
Like many girls from my generation, raised on a diet of Arturo Bandini's oranges and shiny tinned dreams of post-feminism, I have wasted too many years trying to fit into small, muted spaces. I would rather sit down to eat and think with Jessica Andrews any day: Milk Teeth is a novel about holding space, and the hard work that it takes. It is true and I am so grateful it exists. What a relief it is, finally, to step off the ledge: to choose to adventure, to give and take care. -- Livia Franchini
Andrews's sentences are like plum puddings. Rich. Satisfying. And she often uses verbs - spill, split, bleed, leaks - that suggest a messy life. Our heroine does have a messy life - don't we all - but it's presented here in a way that sees truth pouring off every page. The Crack
In lyric dispatches, with the condensed cadences of poetry, Andrews' novel brilliantly explores the ways we grow into and beyond the limits of ourselves, and what happens in the gaps in between who we are and who we're expected to be. -- Andrew McMillan
Milk Teeth is electrifying. It's an exothermic novel that breathes, seethes and writhes. An intimate exploration of class, precarity, sex, power and, above all, of the fragility and exuberance of love. The prose is vivid, gorgeous and supple. It's immediate and ultra-sensual and has the emotional pitch and intensity of the best gig you've ever been to. A thunderbolt of a book. -- Francesca Reece
Jessica Andrews' arresting account of obsessive young love and anxiety, Milk Teeth, more than fulfils the promise of her debut, Saltwater -- Patrick Gale, Big Writers on Their Best Reads of 2022 Daily Mail
As for a new book that I'm excited about, Jessica Andrews' Milk Teeth - her follow-up to award-winning debut novel Saltwater - would have to be it. Lyrical prose, sticky Mediterranean heat and vivid descriptions make this coming-of-age story transporting, sensual and completely addictive. Themes of loneliness, belonging, identity and love - and how we're ultimately deserving of it - will both break and warm your heart. A must for fans of Sally Rooney. -- Best Holiday Reads by Roxy Kavousi-Walker Net-a-Porter
Milk Teeth examines what it means to allow ourselves to live. SheerLuxe
Across its blissfully sprawling passages detailing scenes from different cities, what anchors the novel is its exploration of how hunger, class, desire and gender are interlaced . . . In Saltwater Andrews sought a voice that is her own, something she has truly settled into in Milk Teeth. Addressed in second person to the narrator's lover, the writing is gilded with a vulnerable immediacy, blisteringly honest and visceral. Andrews, already lauded, has come into her own. -- Miriam Balanescu Irish Times
There aren't many high-quality novels for adults that pay serious attention to eating disorders . . . so it's good to find Andrews writing with such precision . . . Andrews's writing style is sensual . . . consuming and sexy. -- Susie Goldsbrough The Times
This confidence in her material - in placing centre stage a young, unnamed northern woman living a precarious existence but struggling to carve out more space for herself - makes her work reminiscent of Gwendoline Riley . . . unusually raw . . . so honest and hopeful. -- Alex Peake-Tomkinson Financial Times
An experience akin to having the hue and saturation slider of your mind moved to maximum . . . a brilliantly hopeful book -- Wendy Erskine Caught by the River
Astute, gut-wrenching...For a novel that is so sharp and often written with such linguistic utility, it isn't at all sparse. Despite these moments in which the narration is given the control that the narrator so desires, this novel is full. In fact, fittingly, one might say it has real weight. Lunate
A transporting, visceral second novel... a sizzling novel to read in the heat, when you're hungry for life. Lucy Writers Platform
A sensual and languid love story. -- Sadhbh O’Sullivan Refinery29
A tide of sharply sensuous detail keeps the reader riveted as the book flows by in a series of candidly recounted episodes sustained by voice rather than plot. Andrews takes aim at the cultural pressures shaping unhealthy ideals of femininity without ever seeming to preach. -- Anthony Cummins Daily Mail
A sharp and beguiling love story . . . languid, elegantly written and dripping with a rich emotional humidity . . . Milk Teeth is a transporting, gorgeous novel Independent
I liked it very much . . . the language, the prose, is very rich . . . there was a melody to it, I found myself reading passages aloud as if there was a poetry to it. -- Agnès Poirier BBC Radio 4 Front Row
Andrews' prose is distinctly stylised. It possesses a heightened sensuality which reflects the protagonist's aspiration to live fiercely, "like lightning" - free of restraint . . . Milk Teeth possesses a highly charged and often deliberately uncomfortable intimacy. -- Michael Donkor i
Andrews's lyrical prose overflows with sweet metaphors and sensuous imagery that . . . remains somehow addictive. -- Ellys Woodhouse New Statesman
An intimate love story . . . Lazy comparisons to Sally Rooney don't do Andrews' unique writing style justice. Milk Teeth is a must-read. Reaction.Life
Poignant Daily Mail

Jessica Andrews writes fiction. Her debut novel, Saltwater, was published in 2019 and won the Portico Prize in 2020 and her second novel, Milk Teeth, was published in 2022. She is a Contributing Editor for ELLE magazine and she writes for the Guardian, the Independent, BBC Radio 4 and Stylist, among others. She was nominated for the ELLE List in 2020 and shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction Futures in 2022. She co-runs literary and arts magazine, The Grapevine, and co-presents literary podcast, Tender Buttons. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at City University, London.

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