Toothpull of St Dunstan is Kevin Davey’s third novel. His previous books were Playing Possum and Radio Joan. You can read reviews of them, here and here. Davey’s a Whitstable-based author, and all three books are set within a few miles of the town: Playing Possum in London and Whitstable, Radio Joan in a nursing home in Whitstable, and Toothpull in nearby Canterbury. The style could be described as “Modernist.” Think James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound. It’s a form that flourished in the early part of the 20th century, and hailed in literary circles, but largely ignored by the reading public.
The reading experience can be disorientating. Toothpull is no exception. There’s no plot as such. No characterization. No development. No narrative flow. Time doesn’t work in a linear way. Parts of the action take place in the present, before shifting into the past. Twenty-First century characters meld into 13th century settings and at times it’s hard to know where you are.
I read the first 20 pages in a state of befuddlement, having no idea what it was about. It was only when I wrote to the author to complain, and he told me that it’s meant as a memoir, that it came into focus. You’re hearing the very particular voice of the narrator as it evolves over time. To be fair, it does say this on the back cover, but for some reason I failed to notice. Once that became clear I started again from the beginning and the reading became easier.
So I’m in two minds about the book. It’s not a page-turner. You’re not left on the edge of your seat, wondering what’s going to happen next. More often than not it involves going back to the beginning of the sentence to try to figure out what it’s supposed to mean. It’s like an extended cryptic crossword puzzle. You have to decipher the sentences like clues in order to understand what’s going on.
The story consists of a series of vignettes of historical events as told from the point of view of the narrator, an unnamed 700-year-old dentist (the “Toothpull” of the title) living on St Dunstans Street, on the approach to the Westgate, outside (“Without”) the city wall in Canterbury, Kent. It’s not made clear what the episodes represent. Sometimes I was already aware of the historical incidents depicted, sometimes not. Even when I knew what was supposed to be going on it could be hard to make sense of. Much of the action is hidden behind veils of literary trickery. There’s alliteration, pun, rhyme, onomatopoeia, glossolalia, ekphrasis. Ekphrasis means to reference another work of art. Toothpull is full of that. It wears its learning on its sleeve. If I was being uncharitable I might say that it bears the mark of intellectual arrogance. The writer’s a learned man writing for other learned people. He wants you to know that and to measure yourself by his standards. Most of us, I suspect, would fail. More charitably, I think that the author spends much of his time in his own head, in an ongoing dialogue between the books he reads and the products of his imagination, and that the obscurity of the text reflects his own sense of disconnectedness from the consensual world.
On the other hand, he has an unparalleled historical imagination. He has a way of bringing history to life, not so much on the grand scale as on the small. The life of this particular street, with its cast of passing characters, is revealed in revelatory detail. The language he uses goes in and out of focus. Sometimes it has a precision, a presence, that makes it almost seem to be alive, sometimes it’s so obscure as to baffle the brain.
Take this as an example. There are a number of made-up words, such as “CLOCCAGLONG COLOCALONG” on the first page. And again: “GLOCCACLONG.” Reading the context, it’s clear this is an attempt to render the sound of bells into English. It’s an insane task, impossible. So you have to ask: why not simply refer to the bells ringing and allow the readers’ imagination to do the rest? Why bamboozle us with the limitations of written script
The book also has the air of an in-joke. There are surreal elements, like talking heads that narrate their own demise, and ahistorical references to 1960s cartoons and a host of other oddities collected together, like the strange items in a cabinet of curiosities; this is one of the motifs in the book, Toothpull’s tooth collection that he keeps in a cabinet in his room, which he spends 700 years putting together, and which is rejected by various institutions when he offers it to them towards the end of his life.
We’re never told how he manages to reach such an age, nor how he acquired his dental obsession. Almost his only discernible personality trait is that he thinks about teeth a lot. Every character he encounters is described in terms of what’s revealed when they open their mouths. Dentistry appears to have been born into him. The book opens with dentistry, and ends with dentistry. Tooth and gum metaphors abound. It’s like we’re looking into the text and finding a wide-open, gaping mouth instead of a plot.
Perhaps the narrator’s great age is a device to allow the author to reflect upon the changing times of this narrow strip of territory between St Dunstan’s Church and the Westgate. It's about half a mile long, around seven miles from Whitstable. This is where the book comes into its own. I’d never really thought about this street before. It was just somewhere I passed through on my way between the two towns. Reading the book gave the place a personality. It made it real. I visited the church for the first time in 40 years or more of living in this part of Kent. I sat in the garden of the House of St Agnes. I looked at the buildings. Many of them are medieval. I wondered about the generations who had passed their lives here, behind these ancient walls.
Would I recommend the book? Yes and no, and with the following qualifications. It’s hard going, grindingly painful in places. Maybe it’s an example of a book that embodies its subject matter in the text. Reading it can really feel like having your teeth pulled. Its descriptions of dental techniques are uncomfortable, guaranteed to make you dread your next visit to the dentist. On the other hand, if you put the work in, there are treasures to be found. It takes persistence and concentration. You have to stay focused, but if you’re willing to engage with it on its own terms, if you allow the language to enter you, if you accept the shifts in perspective that leave you stranded somewhere between the middle ages and the present, if you surrender to its strangeness and its complexity, it’s worth the struggle. A sense of history coming to life. All the sights and sounds and smells. All the mouths. All the teeth. You’ll never think about history the same way again.
—You can buy the book here.