The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli and Christina MacSweeney

A novel about the creative process, the value of art and the cult of literary celebrity that follows one man with a mouth full of bad teeth and a life full of stories.

I disliked this the same way I disliked The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. There is something about this Latin American literature style - humorous, quickly-told tales of unlikable, over-confident characters, mostly told in 1st person - that just doesn't excite me. I was about to stop after the first third, but then enjoyed the middle part (the clowns, a tease of Gustavo realising he's maybe a bad person) just enough to stick with it. Thankfully the book is short.

Some of the experimental structure of the book gets lost when consumed in audiobook form.

Not a story to just blow through, it was written as chapbooks to a group of factory workers who then gave feedback and direction to the story.

When my professors first assigned this book to me all I could think was: BORING. Now it's been almost five years and I think about this book A LOT! Just read it. It is NOT BORING!!!

Really, a very strange little book and one that was supposed to be my end-of-2017 reading challenge sprint due to being rather slim. Yet, the book is quite compelling if you don't get thrown off kilter by the strangeness of the story and characters. You never really know what's going on, but the author's whimsical style draws you in and pushes you away simultaneously.