Author: Graham Joyce
Written: 1996
Publisher: England: Signet / Penguin books, America: Tor / Tom Doherty and Associates
The story of Sam and Terry and Clive, and sometimes Alice, but especially Sam...and the Tooth Fairy.
This might be about the symbiotic nature of dreaming. Or the selfish nature of wishes. Or it could be just another novel about coming-of-age in England, and lust, and love, and acceptance, and maturity, and hooligans, and bombs, and suicide (though not angst, per se).
Sam loses a tooth while teasing a friend, and on a dare to prove the existence (or lack thereof) of the tooth fairy, puts his tooth beneath his pillow without warning his parents of the occurence. He wakes to a draft in the middle of the night and sees the tooth fairy, and it all begins to spiral out of control.
Enchantment. Desire. Need. Urban Fantasy with a deft edge of horror. Sort of a cross between Charles de Lint's Newford Tales, and Raymond Feist's Faerie Tale.
I picked it up at 12:30 am and finished it at 3:30 am. I only looked at the clock once, mostly out of a realization that I was exhausted. It's probably one of those books that needs to be read straight through for full effect, though preferably not on a week night. Only 320 pages. Intense, haunting...familiar.