Boy, Snow, Bird
Books | Fiction / Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology
3.5
(273)
Helen Oyeyemi
As seen on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, where it was described as “gloriously unsettling… evoking Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Angela Carter, Edgar Allan Poe, Gabriel García Márquez, Chris Abani and even Emily Dickinson,” and already one of the year’s most widely acclaimed novels:“Helen Oyeyemi has fully transformed from a literary prodigy into a powerful, distinctive storyteller…Transfixing and surprising.”—Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A)“I don’t care what the magic mirror says; Oyeyemi is the cleverest in the land…daring and unnerving… Under Oyeyemi’s spell, the fairy-tale conceit makes a brilliant setting in which to explore the alchemy of racism, the weird ways in which identity can be transmuted in an instant — from beauty to beast or vice versa.” – Ron Charles, The Washington PostFrom the prizewinning author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Gingerbread, and Peaces comes a brilliant recasting of the Snow White fairy tale as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity.In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries Arturo Whitman, a local widower, and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow.A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African-Americans passing for white. And even as Boy, Snow, and Bird are divided, their estrangement is complicated by an insistent curiosity about one another. In seeking an understanding that is separate from the image each presents to the world, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.
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Author
Helen Oyeyemi
Pages
320
Publisher
Penguin
Published Date
2014-03-06
ISBN
9781101613108 1101613106
Ratings
Google: 4
Community ReviewsSee all
"Interesting story and take on Snow White. Honestly though, the ending takes away a lot because it just sort of stops at the start of another adventure and there is no sequel. I suppose I'm supposed to get that they made up or something but instead I'm left with wondering about sooooooo many things in this book. Why was one sister trying to drive her newly returned sister crazy with dead woman singing? Why do they disappear in mirrors? <br/><br/>The narration was great until the last section when I couldn't quite tell who was telling the story within the story. <br/><br/>There were a lot of names and stories told about people in the main characters lives but we didn't spend enough time with any of them. I feel like we flitted through the lives of these people after the first section was done. The racism is lightly addressed in terms of passing, employment and gender. Nothing but the end addresses gender identity and orientation with an implication that the person they seek has to be "brought out". And there is a confusing lot of references to magic that never goes anywhere. I can't say I was thrilled with this one but it was interesting up to the end just not satisfying."
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