So often, stories about creepy family houses in New England are subtle, are-they-aren't-they mysteries. I think that I went into What Big Teeth expecting it to be coy about its magic and monsters, and was delighted when it quickly went full, unapologetic Addams Family. I went into 'What Big Teeth' expecting it to be coy about its magic and monsters, and was delighted when it quickly went full, unapologetic Addams Family.

And then there's the family's mysterious accountant, who never seems to age, and who everyone in the family is a little bit in love with - Eleanor included. Her werewolf grandfather, sister, father, and cousin want to fight her, her mer-creature mother doesn't know how to deal with her, her knife-wielding aunt keeps menacing her, and the witch grandmother who banished her in the first place won't tell her why she's a danger to them all. When she arrives home after years of absence, on the run from yet another terrible mishap, there is no hiding from the fact that her family is not like other families. There are a lot of things that Eleanor can't quite remember, and many family secrets that she has never understood. This is the best way to describe the premise of Rose Szabo's debut novel, What Big Teeth - though the Zarrin family is both much stranger and more dour than the affable Addamses.Įleanor Zarrin hasn't been home to her family's ramshackle mansion in Maine since her grandmother, the matriarch, sent her away to boarding school as a punishment for some terrible mishap that Eleanor can't remember clearly. What if Wednesday Addams had been sent away to boarding school when she was little? Would she remember all the secrets of her monstrous family? Would she remember why, of all of them, she was the one so dangerous that she had to be banished?

What big teeth rose szabo