Sara in Bookland: Book Tour: What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo [Interview + Giveaway!]

What Big Teeth
by Rose Szabo

Published by: Farrar Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Publication date: February 2nd 2021
Genres: Fantasy, Gothic, Young Adult

Synopsis:

Rose Szabo’s thrilling debut What Big Teeth is a dark, gothic fantasy YA novel about a teen girl who returns home to her strange, wild family after years of estrangement, perfect for fans of Wilder Girls.

Eleanor Zarrin has been estranged from her wild family for years. When she flees boarding school after a horrifying incident, she goes to the only place she thinks is safe: the home she left behind. But when she gets there, she struggles to fit in with her monstrous relatives, who prowl the woods around the family estate and read fortunes in the guts of birds.

Eleanor finds herself desperately trying to hold the family together. In order to save them all Eleanor must learn to embrace her family of monsters and tame the darkness inside her.

Exquisitely terrifying, beautiful, and strange, this fierce paranormal fantasy will sink its teeth into you and never let go.

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The Interview

1.Hello Rose, thank you for being here with us today! To start, please tell us something about your book and your protagonist Eleanor.

Thank you for having me! What Big Teeth follows Eleanor, a 17-year-old girl, as she runs away from boarding school to return to her family’s estate. When she gets there, she’s confronted with the reality of her family. For one thing: they’re all terrifying. But perhaps the stranger thing is that her grandmother, the powerful witch who controls the family fortune, seems afraid of her. As events unravel, Eleanor learns some hard truths about her family, but also about her own past.

2.What would you say the hardest part of writing this book was?

I would say: revising it. I am very good at...I want to say, mystical vision. I am very bad at making sense, and so my poor agent and editor had to drag me through probably eight rounds of revisions altogether. And every time I was like “ah, yes, now the book makes sense and has no plot holes and feels concrete and real.” And then a copyeditor caught a plothole! I think I learned a lot from this process, though. It’s given me a more editorial eye, a better sense of what I’m writing for me and what will actually serve the reader. I still write the parts that are for me, but I’m less precious about cutting them if they don’t work in the final manuscript.

3. If you could pick a favorite quote from your book, what would it be?

This is going to sound strange, but I always struggle to pull quotes. They look so naked! Or the emotional truth of the quote feels like it’s missing without the lines around it. But one of my favorite parts is the description of Eleanor’s family home:

“It loomed over the landscape. Towers and porches and balconies and bay windows. Story after story of decorative gingerbreading, crown molding, sunburst emblems, recessed niches, and high gables, and all of it covered in gray scalloped shingles, like scales, and at the very top of the highest tower, the creaking weathervane in the shape of a running rabbit. It was hard to look at: not all of it fit in my view at once, even after I took a few steps back. I realized that now, it scared me. It was too much. It felt oppressive, a giant squatting at the top of the world.”

4. Is this book going to be a stand-alone or are we to expect sequels?

I am really not sure! I have an image in my mind of Eleanor’s sister Luma wrestling an alligator. But my process often goes like that: a handful of images start to adhere to each other, and it might take years for them to actually coalesce into a book. I do have a new two-part series in the works right now. But it’s really different. Although it still has monsters in it.

5. Now speaking about you, what book are you currently reading?

I’m reading the absolutely delightful Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg. The conceit of the book is that it’s a found historical manuscript, published with annotations by the scholar who found it, kind of like Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire. The story is about a legendary thief named Jack Sheppard from 18th century London, but this “lost” manuscript makes it clear that Jack is trans. It’s a perfect adventure story

and somehow also a parable about academic freedom and surveillance and how we’re all constantly commodifying ourselves. I am absolutely furious that I didn’t come up with it, because it’s brilliant.

6. Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?

Aside from Rosenberg, I’ve also really enjoyed S.T. Gibson’s debut, A Dowry of Blood, which is out January 31st. I got to read an ARC, which feels like a perk of being in the writing community at last. And I just read Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark, which has me excited for his first novel-length work, which is out this year!

7. And if you could work with any author, who would it be?

I have a huge admiration for Shonda Rhimes, the TV writer and producer. The quality she maintains, at the pace she works, is just staggering to me. The dream would be to have her adapt my work the way she’s doing with Bridgerton. I’d cry.

About the author: Rose Szabo is a nonbinary writer from Richmond, VA, where they live with an assortment of people and animals and teach writing at VCU. They have an MA in English from the University of Maine and an MFA in creative writing from VCU. Their work has been published in See the Elephant and Quaint magazines. What Big Teeth is their first novel.