This is a pretty harrowing book and I spent the most of it trying to figure out if it was a novel or a memoir. I think it’s kind of both and kind of a deeply autobiographical novel. It shares a lot of similarities in form and structure (but not plot) to Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior, in the ways of mixing myth and spirituality in with real life events and trauma for figurative reasons, but also without highlighting these elements as figurative at all.
The story is about a young Inuit woman growing up, experiencing horrific sexual violence from multiple different abusers at different times in her life, growing into the person she is today with a strong sense of spirituality and distrust of men, and figuring out who she is and her place in the world. There’s some really fascinating elements of mythical fiction or kind of magical realism throughout as well. There’s the everpresent and ever-discomforting going back and forth between sexuality and sexual violence and how there’s both a cyclical nature to the ways in which these interweave the narrator’s life.
The star of this book though, and I don’t know if this is only the audiobook or if it’s written into the print version at all is the performance of the author as the reader. Both the narrator and the author are throat singers, and the narration style of the author’s reading includes a lot of use of throat singing to punctuate, create meaning and intimacy, and as a transition between sections. I can’t claim to know much of anything about the art form, but it does add intimacy and authenticity to the story. The author’s small voice (this may be her real speaking voice, but she also sometimes uses other louder voices, showing this as a choice) also adds to the sense of vulnerability of the narrator throughout.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Split-Tooth-Tanya-Tagaq/dp/014319805X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=split+tooth&qid=1566421098&s=gateway&sr=8-1)