Helen Oyeyemi

A modern reimagining of the Snow White fairy tale follows the experiences of a woman who marries a mid-20th-century Massachusetts single father and succumbs to vanity when the birth of her baby reveals her husband to be a light-skinned African American. By the award-winning author of White Is for Witching.

Boy, Snow, Bird

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 Post From 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.

A Novel

britt

this was actually kinda insane and i don’t know what to do with myself after reading this

y✦

✦ what a strange "fairytale;" 
✦ had the potential for greatness with rich cultural themes, commentary on race, perception
✦ magic realism felt forced
✦ great read if u love the bizarre but i cant help but think it gave up after the first part

Have you ever been halfway through a book & still don’t know what you’re reading about? Yeah that was this book for me & my first DNF. A part of me wants to finish it just to have it fully read but I have to DNF something at some point so I guess the time is now 🤷🏻‍♀️

Mariah crawford

Mary Rose Luksha

Boy, Snow Bird weaves elements of magical realism into a retelling of the Snow White tale in regards to race relations in the U.S. in the 1960's. That sentence is a brief, paraphrased summary of the book jacket, and makes Boy, Snow, Bird sound like every reader's wet dream. While it's technically true, I think there's more to the novel than just the magical realism and Snow White allegory.

People looking for another The Help, look elsewhere. Boy, Snow, Bird isn't a cut and dry racism-is-bad type of novel. It deals more with hierarchy and passing and the effect that can have on an individual's psyche. The title Boy, Snow, Bird comes from three main characters. Boy, a white woman, her daughter Bird who is mixed race, and her step daughter Snow who is also mixed race but can 'pass.' I loved the magical realism, it was almost believable but just out of reach. And the characters struggling with the cultural implications of race were very well written - lots of three dimensional characters, good dialogue that doesn't preach but also shows the nuances of the issue at hand.

And Oyeyemi's prose is stunningly beautiful. Her character's insights are sharp and succinct. She can say a lot in just a few words. My only criticism is in the second section of the book, a large part of it is dedicated to correspondence between two characters and this felt a little like a literary device to speed the plot along and help the reader get to know a character who is left out of a lot of the book. It just seemed like poor structuring to me. 

I was well prepared to give this novel four stars, if for her prose alone, but (view spoiler)[ SPOILER ALERT - if you read any further I'm going to talk about the twisty ending - you have been warned!!!!!

But the twist in the last two chapters of the book came out of left field for me. In the spirit of 'not everything is as it seems' which is a heavy theme throughout this book, Boy finds out her father the rat catcher is actually her mother who has either multiple personality disorder or is trans? The author does not make this clear. Things I understand: 1) having well-written trans people in mainstream literature is awesome and important, 2) in a cultural context people in the 1960's might assume a trans person has a mental health issue. Things I do not understand: 1) how this revelation moves the story along, or develops characters in any way, 2) Oyeyemi not letting Frank/Frances speak for himself about his transition, instead the novel ends with characters going off to make Frank Frances again which sounds so absolutely vile. If she intended Frank to have MPD, then I think it should have been written less ambiguously because she kind of makes it seem like trans people have a mental disorder which is so ignorant, rude, and hurtful, that I'd be surprised some editor didn't catch that and get her to rewrite it. My number one literary complaint with this ending (human rights issues aside) is that it did not serve the novel or the characters in any way. The twist ending could have been anything - anything - and the fact that Oyeyemi drops this poorly written bomb then ends the book 10 pages later...ugh I was frustrated to no end.  (hide spoiler)]

Autumn

tldr: Had us in the first half ngl

Okay, I love Oyeyemi's imagination. I admire her passion for magical realism, and her writing holds a magic to it that other authors can't touch. One issue I've had with her books, however, is that it is very easy to get lost in the writing. With Boy, Snow, Bird in particular, it felt like Oyeyemi was jumping around a little too much with how she wanted to rewrite, I'm guessing, Cinderella.

But this jumping around does work in her favor; many fairytale characters are flat and one-dimensional, and they are only in the story to play a role. It's one of those stories you have to think about after reading it, and I'm still thinking about (view spoiler)[the connection between the snake bracelet and the story about the snake inside the woman (hide spoiler)] . 

The ending wasn't predictable but I guess it made sense with the context??? It definitely felt rushed and it was probably the most disappointing part of the novel. It ended too soon and we didn't get closure.

Leelynn Brady

I’ve been thinking about what to really say about this book. Maybe I’m just not really mature enough to really appreciate this novel and what it was telling me outside of the lines, but I just feel like I didn’t really understand this book well enough. But let me try to get my thoughts out on here so I can work through it.

Find my full review on my blog

Daryl Houston

Initially I didn't love the voices in which the book is written. It felt very off-hand and honestly Boy's voice early on was annoying. Somewhere in the second half (at about the time the letters between two of the characters commence), I began to enjoy the book more. I think it's an interesting idea, but I didn't love the execution.

Paula Plaza Ponte 

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 a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. 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 lightskinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, 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.

bitter delight

Zoe R

Erin G.

Lindy

"[R]ecasts 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."--Back cover.

Boy, Snow, Bird

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