Tantrum is a novel to be devoured in one sitting and then pondered long after. Thea is a mother doing her best, living in the New Mexico high desert with her husband and three young children. But her baby girl is developing impossibly fast, rapidly gaining motor skills and an apparent penchant for violence, and leaving Thea wondering what, exactly, she gave birth to. Rachel Eve Moulton has written a truly strange and mesmerizing story of monstrosity and motherhood.
Moulton takes readers on a wild ride and delivers an unforgettable ending as both baby and mother develop through the story from potentially dangerous to explicitly-fanged and supernatural. Despite the next-level intensity of the novel's events and its serious underlying themes of abuse and female rage, Thea's acerbic tone lightens the mood. She spends her mornings avoiding her friendly neighbor, who speed walks with "that flappy turkey wing shit with her arms that speed walkers do, and I can tell she thinks it makes her sporty."
Moulton writes with sharp-tongued humor layered with emotional depth and honesty. The novel progressively circles Thea's childhood trauma and her damaging relationship with her own mother, exploring generational inheritance. Thea struggles with the belief that there's something deeply wrong with her and fears that her flaws might ruin the lives of her children. Tantrum poses questions about maternal guilt, depicting what happens when the monstrous thing inside one woman is finally let loose. --Carol Caley, writer