The Tooth Fairy

The Tooth Fairy

3.85 of 5 stars 3.85  ·  rating details  ·  1,175 ratings  ·  136 reviews
Sam and his friends are like any normal gang of normal young boys. Roaming wild around the outskirts of their car-factory town. Daring adults to challenge their freedom.

Until the day Sam wakes to find the Tooth Fairy sitting on the edge of his bed. Not the benign figure of childhood myth, but an enigmatic presence that both torments and seduces him, changing his life forev
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Paperback, 324 pages
Published December 15th 1998 by Tom Doherty Associates (first published 1996)
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Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 2,506)
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The Chaotic Reader
The feeling I came away from The Tooth Fairy with was neither of happiness nor of satisfaction and, although it was a fairly dark story, neither was the feeling anything like despair. Somewhere between those points is some combination of recognition, rememberance, anticipation, and a sense of loss that make up the un-nameable feeling with which I connected with this book. This is a fairy tale and a coming of age story that combine beautifully to remind us of how much we lose and how much we gain...more
Janette Fleming
Graham Joyce surely is one of the most underrated authors...is this possibly because he is so hard to market? Is he horror? Is he fantasy? Or possibly `social surrealism'...?

What ever he is his stories are strange, magical and original and he fast becoming one of my favourite authors.

He likes to instill in the reader a feeling of lingering uneasiness …. ‘You come away from the book feeling your perception of the world has been just been knock slightly askew away from what you previously thought...more
Mike (the Paladin)
Some will like this book. I'm not one of them. While it has what I suppose strives to be a "touching ending" it can't change the rest of the book. This is one of a series of books (by that I don't mean a "series by the same author" I mean a series of books by various authors that treads similar ground) that have followed the same track over the last several years. It's not a new idea, it's the idea of taking an "established" literary form and "flipping it". I've seen some "switched out" fairy ta...more
Brooke Johnston
Jan 22, 2013 Brooke Johnston rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: someone bored with no other books around.
Not enjoyable. The writing is good, but nothing really happens and I'm not at all interested in what happens next -- because I suspect nothing happens next. The only thing inspiring me to finish is sheer force of will. Events happen in chunks, but they're minor events that don't lead to anything much. No payoff so far.
Julia
Dec 18, 2008 Julia rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who aren't afraid of the dark
Shelves: magical-realism
What I remembered, rather than learned, was how really terrifying childhood and adolescence can be! The character of the "Tooth Fairy", at once both horrifying and mesmerizing, wraps up all those childhood (pre-puberty) and teenage (puberty) fears into one repelling yet intriguing character. The story centers on 3 boys--Sam, Clive, and Terry--and begins with a large pike from the local pond biting off two of Terry's toes. It's a rollercoaster ride after that, and a dark one at that--imagine ridi...more
Brian
It's hard to classify this book. I suppose you'd call it a fantasy but if that suggests magic etc., then that's altogether wrong. It's about a boy who is haunted by a nightmarish and sexually predatory tooth fairy. It's never entirely clear whether or not the tooth fairy is real or imagined. Though often disturbing, the book is also very funny and even poignant in its painfully detailed evocation of adolescence and there are some remarkably original flashes in the writing. Uncomfortable but comp...more
Mike Carey
I met Graham Joyce at Fantasycon last year and asked him which of his books would be the best one to start with. He recommended The Tooth Fairy, so I went ahead and picked it up. I went in blind, as it were - I didn't even read the blurb on the back of the book, and consequently had no idea what to expect.

It was a very compelling read. There's a sense in which the storytelling is deliberately unstructured, depriving you of the usual clues to the direction the narrative is taking. This has the ef...more
Lynne Cantwell
IMHO, Graham Joyce doesn't get enough respect in the US, despite the fact that he's won both the British Fantasy Award and the World Fantasy Award. Part of the problem may be that his work is hard to categorize, apart from putting it in the catch-all "speculative fiction" bin. The Tooth Fairy, for example, is psychological horror, maybe. Or maybe it's fantasy. It kind of depends on how you view what the main character is going through.

Well, it's puberty that Sam is going through. But he's accomp...more
BarkLessWagMore
I loved this odd book and found it very difficult to put down. It's a character driven coming of age story about three young boys growing up in apparent normalcy. But underneath the veneer of normalcy simmers unexpected moments of darkness and danger. As the boys deal with life's many pitfalls -- growing up too smart, too dumb, too mediocre -- lurking in the shadows is a vicious tooth fairy which only one of them (Sam) can see. This tooth fairy is not the sweet version of childhood dreams but a...more
Amy (SpedBug)
I was in the reading mood, so I blew through this fairly quickly, but it lacked the charm of his most recent book, Some Kind of Fairy Tale, which was the novel that brought Graham Joyce to my attention. Due to my positive experience with the first book, I expected more from this one and came away wanting.

This novel, like SKoFT, leaves the reader to decide if the characters were caught up in supernatural happenings or merely dealing with psychological issues. It's a coming-of-age story that follo...more
Patrick
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Steve
This was pretty good, but I've enjoyed a couple of his newer works more. I was somewhat surprised that this is considered his most popular book - granted, it's only somewhat recently that Joyce is being read widely in the U.S., and not that many of his books are readily available (but I get the sense that is changing). Joyce makes a big point of not wanting his books compared, but, well, life doesn't work that way. This is rather dark book, but that's to be expected. As is often the case, ambigu...more
Algernon
[9/10] A disturbing coming of age story set ib rural England around the 1960's. The Moodies is a band of friends reminding me of movie favorites like The Goonies, Stand by Me, The Outsiders or American Grafitty. What is particular to this story is the continuous balancing act between the quirky comedy of growing up pains and the horror elements that rear their head from the very first page, where a huge pike bites some toes from the foot of one of the boys. It goes darker from here, but I had ma...more
Minsma
A brilliant evocation of coming-of-age in the sixties, juxtaposed with an hallucinatory sense of wonder--and terror.

Sam, seven at the beginning of the story, has the misfortune of actually catching the tooth fairy in the act of switching tooth for cash. He/she becomes obsessed with Sam, dogging him through his adolescence. Alternately terrifying and erotic, loving and malevolent, male and female, this creature becomes Sam's constant secret and the fantastical backbeat of his life.

In contrast t...more
Tom
Here's another author I'm not sure how I missed for this long. I checked Wikipedia on this guy and the entry describes how his writing does not fit into any particular genre. This one could be dark fantasy, horror, or (as the author believes) a coming-of-age story involving three boys in an English village. Clive is supersmart from the moment we meet him. Terry, a rather unfortunate lad in many ways (a pike snaps off two of his toes on the first page when he is five years old) is the athletic on...more
Marvin
Three and a half stars. The Tooth Fairy isn't really a horror novel. I'm not entirely sure it is even supernatural. What I'm sure about is that this is the strangest coming-of-age novel I've ever read. On the night he loses a tooth, seven year old Sam places it under his pillow and in turn encounters a strange creature who is like no tooth fairy that you have ever heard of. The tooth fairy and Sam become connected through his childhood as the creature appears and reappears taunting and seducing...more
Jessica
It's hard to put into words exactly how I feel about this book. After pondering for quite some time, I decided to give it 3 stars.

On the one hand, I thought it was really well written. The characters are very easy to relate to, and their individual personalities make them interesting to read about. Sam is the awkward one, Clive the smart one, Terry the athletic one. Just like the groups of boys we all knew in school. Following the boys through their youth was sad at times, but they always bounce...more
David Mahaffey
At Powell's in Portland, in the room built for science fiction and fantasy, there's a note that says "If you like China Mieville, you may also like Graham Joyce." So I did. And I do.

It's not possible to say whether the goings-on of The Tooth Fairy should be classified as fantasy, or horror, or simply a coming-of-age story. This is because all proper tales of adolescence are horrifying and surreal. Is the titular character a psychological construct or a succubus? Does it influence the "real" worl...more
Majid Nobles
I don't know how to rate this book. basically, Mr. Joyce did quite well, catching my interest on the first few paragraphs, ( I usually get bored on this part of most stories) the story went on quite well from the beginning, but as it progresses, it subtly loses its grip on me. Most events happen without any significance on the future events, and in my opinion, there isn't any major, breathtaking climax in it. It's an odd and unique novel, though. The descriptions, the surrealism and darkness of...more
Jeff
Graham Joyce blows me away. He writes sensually? That sounds a bit rude. He IS a bit rude. Earthy. You can almost feel and taste and smell, especially the leaf mold, and the musty smell of an old shed years after the suicide of its occupant.

Here he writes about the evolution of a group of young boys, through to their departure for university. He manages to get right inside their (rather strange) world. The protagonist is (literally?) a character in the Tooth Fairy's nightmare.

And when you think...more
Emma Thompson
I found the tooth fairy to be a strange book. It's the story of a boy coming of age in a small industrial town in England. He falls in love, has his heart broken, things go wrong, he goes through all the usual teenage angst. There's also a tooth fairy.

Maybe I'm just being obtuse but I didn't understand. I know the tooth fairy, how it appeared and what it did, was a symbol of childhood and how childhood and adulthood mixed...kind of. Somtimes it was that and sometiems it was something else. It fe...more
Scott
A few years back, Graham Joyce's books had been showing up in my recommendations list at Amazon. And over time, I became very interested in reading some of his work. But it took me a while to finally take the plunge. This was the first book of his that I read.

Here is a rundown from Publishers Weekly via Amazon.Com:

An unlikely sprite assumes a sinister incarnation in this exceptional supernatural novel about a troublesome but endearing trio of boys coming of age in the English Midlands in the 19
...more
Virginia
This book is about a boy named Sam and his friends, Terry and Clive, live in a small grey town in England. The town is like outside of a big factory and it's very depressing. Only until one day the Tooth Fairy comes into Sam's room and sits on the edge of his bed. The Tooth Fairy is not what Sam always thought she would look like. She's more of a thug than the sweet, beautiful Tooth Fairy that everyone thinks she would look like. The Tooth Fairy is always with Sam. She sometimes fights him and...more
Christina
One of the strangest yet cleverly original stories I've read. Mix childhood innoncence, the confusion of adolescent emotion, teenage hormones, and throw in a freakish apparition of a Tooth Fairy that wreaks havoc in horrible, then friendly, and sometimes seductive, ways. Damn. I'll give Graham Joyce credit, he is right up there with Stephen King's brain.

I adore this author's way with words - each page is full of either beautiful imagery or surprising wit when you least expect it. Being along for...more
Vrinda Pendred
I LOVED THIS. The plot synopsis is SO misleading, and this wound up being so much more than it seemed at first. A boy and his friends growing up through tragedy and just general adolescence - all the while, the lead character is visited by a strange, disturbing yet hilarious ugly gothic 'tooth fairy'. I don't want to give too much away but about halfway through I started realising things were more than they seemed, and it wound up being a beautiful story about growing up and making the choice to...more
Alicia
i have nothing against the cliche of striped torn socks and industrial boots, but when i saw that description, i should have known that this book was only going to end in two ways: drugs and counterculture in Great Britain and Insanity.

i don't mind books as long as they don't falsely advertise what it is they are, and i'm just going to put this right out: this book is not really about a tooth fairy. it's not a fantasy book. it's not horror, it's not creepy, it's not supernatural. in short: it's...more
annik
Зубная Фея — потрясающая все нервные окончания, способная расплющить от каждой пятнадцатиминутной затяжки ею. Даже если ее нет на каких-то страницах, книга все равно забивает гвоздики в голову в такт колебаниям ее.. крылышек)
Я читала ее очень медленно — по моим меркам — больше недели. Тянула как могла, коротко вдыхая ее поперек маленьких минуток в метро по пути на работу. И обратно. И потом снова вперед. И обратно. Я погружалась в мир зубных_фей _не_таких_как_мы_себе_представляли.

Я — да, испыт...more
Laura
I found it very strange and often I had no idea where the plot was going, but it's definitely creepy, compelling, and hard to put down. It's a curious mix of a book -- horror, coming of age, mild erotica, fantasy. Joyce's collection of characters gave the book a bit of a demented Stand By Me (or, in written form, The Body) feel. They're a bunch of misfit kids growing up in a small town, just trying to keep themselves occupied and grow up on their own terms. I think Joyce does an excellent job of...more
Tim
The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce is a coming of age story with a pretty demented slant. It follows a boy and his friends from elementary school age until their completion of high school.

The main character, Sam, goes through many of the trials and tribulations that are a hallmark of coming of age tales - dealing with bullies, trying to fit in, first love, etc. The main difference with Sam is that he is going through all these things while being tormented/aided by a strangely twisted version of th...more
Nick
Sep 11, 2011 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars
Shelves: horror
After a long stretch of reading derivative leprosy fantasy ( Thomas Covenant: Lord Foul's Bane ) and a few dozen bad YA books for an MLIS class (see Empty ), I had nearly forgotten the power of a good horror book. This one recalls Simmons' Summer of Night in that it is a slow burning creepy coming-of-age book.

The Tooth Fairy is the horror in question of course. She/he seems to represent puberty, sexual desires, doubts, and all of those other aspects of boyhood that are gladly forgotten. The cre...more
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Graham Joyce is an English writer of speculative fiction and the recipient of numerous awards for both his novels and short stories.

After receiving a B.Ed. from Bishop Lonsdale College in 1977 and a M.A. from the University of Leicester in 1980. Joyce worked as a youth officer for the National Association of Youth Clubs until 1988. He subsequently quit his position and moved to the Greek islands...more
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“Through the window a broken fingernail of moon was visible.” 3 people liked it
“I LOVE HORSES!' shrieked the Tooth Fairy over his shoulder.” 1 person liked it
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