The SHARP TEETH OF LOVE: A NOVEL [Paperback]

Doris Betts (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 22, 1998

A young woman fleeing from her fiance, a runaway child in desperate trouble, a charming wanderer -- in a novel that embraces suspense, love, and the fantastic.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Betts's novels, women tend to run away. The selfish mother in Souls Raised from the Dead abandoned her family to find glamour and excitement, but the heroine of this new novel more resembles the memorable protagonist of Heading West, who took advantage of a kidnapping to escape from her suffocating family and hide out in the Grand Canyon. Here, the heroine is medical/botanical illustrator Luna Stone, who impulsively flees from the gorgeous botany professor who wants to marry her, having suddenly realized that she's fed up with his overbearing and mendacious personality. She leaves him in a Reno hotel (they are traveling from North Carolina to California) and lights out for the area in the Sierra Nevada around the Donner Pass and the Desolation Wilderness. Camping in the woods, Luna encounters young Sam, another runaway, who is hiding from men who operate a child-porn ring. They are joined by yet another loner, Paul Cowan, who had planned to become a Lutheran minister until an accident rendered him deaf. Herself the victim of a martinet father who destroyed her low self-esteem, Luna has survived anorexia and a stay in the psychiatric ward; her mental equilibrium is shaken when she is visited by the ghost of Tamsen Donner, a member of the infamous 1846 party of settlers. When the pornographers find Sam and kidnap him again, Luna and Paul brave danger in the wilderness to rescue the boy. Betts is at her best in calibrating those fine blades of anxiety that eventually can sunder a relationship and in describing the obverse condition, the tentative explorations that can result in the discovery of a soul mate. But this narrative bogs down in her attempts to make meaningful connections between the Donner Party, the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., and numerous theological questions. While Betts's novels are always good reading, this one does not live up to the high standards of her previous works.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Awkward, reserved scientific illustrator Luna Stone is traveling west from North Carolina with her gorgeous fiance, Steven, headed for his first academic job in Riverside, California. The trip is not going well at all; with each passing mile, the plan to stop and get married in Reno seems less and less of a good idea to Luna. When she finally ditches Steven, she ends up camping in the Donner Pass area. There she is haunted by the ghost of Tamsen Donner, of the ill-fated, cannibalizing wagon train, and comes across an abused young boy hiding in the park. Luna is an affecting, complex character whose ensuing adventures are tenderly realized although at times far-fetched. By the author of Souls Raised from the Dead (LJ 3/1/94), this is recommended for popular fiction collections.?Ann H. Fisher, Radford P.L., Va.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1st Scribner pbk. fantasy ed edition (May 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684844753
• ISBN-13: 978-0684844756
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,798,248 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The characters are what made the story worth it..., June 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The SHARP TEETH OF LOVE: A NOVEL (Paperback)

The Sharp Teeth of Love is a novel that while you enjoy reading it and following the story - the author makes you work for it. Many times authors will spoon feed you a story with charcters that you know could only come from a book, Betts aludes to events long before she lets you in to the whole story. Not only was I interested in what was currently happening, I was curious about what had happened in the past events of the characters and what were those circumstances were going to take them.

I do wish that at some points Betts had slowed down and allowed more exploration of the characters and the situation they were in. But at the same time, the lack of information she gave allowed my mind to fill in the rest.

I like being challanged by a novel, without it seeming as though it is trying to be difficult. I was impressed with some of the issues the Betts offered into the story. The characters were beleiveably flawed, which gave a somewhat far fetched plot more reality.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars How is this not a romance novel?, December 22, 2000

By 

Jean Ellen Schulik (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The SHARP TEETH OF LOVE: A NOVEL (Paperback)

The characters, the plot and the dialogue of this novel were what I'd expect to find in typical romance novel. The characters were trite: the self-absorbed fiance, the longsuffering, misunderstood woman who just needs a warm, sensitive man, the warm, sensitive man, and the loveable child-abuse victim. The writing was good, the plot a bit predictable,and it would have been fine if I had been looking in the Harlequin section.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Pleasant Read, February 14, 2010

By 

San Diego Heel (San Diego, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The SHARP TEETH OF LOVE: A NOVEL (Paperback)

I enjoyed the book quite a bit. It does start off a bit slow. I felt the book kept hitting me over the head with David Koresch and Waco references. I never quite figured out what the analogy was.
But once the story gets going, it's interesting and charming in it's own way.
It's one of those books that I looked forward to picking back up and seeing what was going to happen next. It's a quirky story of three misanthropes who somehow find each other.
The book was a very pleasant read.