Cutting Teeth
Julia Fierro, 2014
St. Martin's Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250042026
Summary
Cutting Teeth takes place one late-summer weekend as a group of thirty-something couples gather at a shabby beach house on Long Island, their young children in tow.
Nicole, the hostess, struggles to keep her OCD behaviors unnoticed. Stay-at-home dad Rip grapples with the reality that his careerist wife will likely deny him a second child, forcing him to disrupt the life he loves. Allie, one half of a two-mom family, can't stop imagining ditching her wife and kids in favor of her art. Tiffany, comfortable with her amazing body but not so comfortable in the upper-middle class world the other characters were born into, flirts dangerously, and spars with her best friend Leigh, a blue blood secretly facing financial ruin and dependent on the magical Tibetan nanny everyone else covets.
Throughout the weekend, conflicts intensify and painful truths surface. Friendships and alliances crack, forcing the house party to confront a new order.
Cutting Teeth is about the complex dilemmas of early midlife—the vicissitudes of friendship, of romantic and familial love, and of sex. It’s about class tension, status hunger, and the unease of being in possession of life's greatest bounty while still wondering, is this as good as it gets?
And, perhaps most of all, Julia Fierro’s warm and unpretentious debut explores the all-consuming love we feel for those we need most, and the sacrifice and compromise that underpins that love. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1977
• Where—Turin, Italy
• Raised—on Long Island, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., American University; M.F.A., Iowa
Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York
Julia Fierro's debut novel, Cutting Teeth by HuffPost Books, The Millions, Flavorwire, Brooklyn Magazine, and Marie Claire. Her work has been published, or is forthcoming, in Guernica, Ploughshares, Poets & Writers, Glamour, and other publications, and she has been profiled in the L Magazine, The Observer, and The Economist.
In 2002, she founded the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop, and what started as eight writers meeting in her Brooklyn kitchen has grown into a creative home for over 2,500 writers.
Julia is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow, and currently teaches the Post-MFA workshops at Sackett Street. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. (From Amazon.com and the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[O]bsessive, competitive, and neurotic behavior of parents in their 30s.... As the melting pot of personality churns...jealously, betrayal, and regret slowly overpower any possibility for relaxation. Even though this story is framed to be a cozy and comical slice of life, Fierro’s attempts to relate to the current age of parenting ultimately fall short.
Publishers Weekly
Cutting Teeth captures the complexity of forging new friendships and redefining lives as contemporary parents. Julia Fierro's characters are meticulously drawn, the situations emotionally charged. Readers, especially young parents, won't be able to look away.
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Many of the characters in the novel keep substantial secrets from one another for a variety of reasons. Whose do you think is the most damaging, and why?
2. Which of the characters’ storylines were you most interested in reading, and resonated with you most?
3. Which character’s central dilemma evoked the most sympathy from you? Why?
4. Nicole conceals her anxiety because she is afraid it will make her seem "crazy" and because she feels ashamed. Do you think, in spite of widespread knowledge today about depression and anxiety, particularly postpartum depression, there is still a stigma?
5. The epigraph to the novel is: Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth. How does this relate to Cutting Teeth, and do you think it applies to more than one character?
6. Who is more of an outsider from among the group: Tiffany or Samten or Rip? Why?
7. Do you think the difference between being a stay‐at‐home mom or a mother with a career outside the home still creates barriers between women? Have you witnessed mothers judging others mothers (and themselves) for these choices?
8. What was your interpretation of Leigh’s feelings for Tiffany? Of Tiffany’s feelings for Leigh?
9. Do you think Leigh and Tiffany’s friendship might have evolved differently in a pre‐cell phone era?
10. Do you think the dynamics of the romantic partnerships in the book are unique to contemporary times? How might they have manifested in an earlier generation?
11. What character were you "rooting" for the most?
12. Who is the "best" parent among the group and why? Who is the worst? Why?
13. If Hank was your child, would allow him his princess dress?
14. Should Susanna and Allie stay together?
15. Agree or disagree: Parenthood, the way adults now generally relate to their children, insofar as it is depicted in Cutting Teeth, has evolved in a positive way.
16. Who committed the worst "crime" in the book? Why? Whose "bad behavior" is most justifiable and why?
17. Cutting Teeth compares the characters’ expectations for their mid-‐life experience with the reality of their day‐to‐day lives? Do you feel your life is well balanced right now, and does it match the expectations your younger self had ten years ago? Why or why not? Do you think those closest to you would be surprised at the way you’d answer that question?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)