There will be weirdness

“When something catches your attention just keep your attention on it, stick with it ’til the end, and somewhere along the line there’ll be weirdness.”

Yes. There will be weirdness. In Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird, a woman named Boy marries into a family of African Americans passing as white. However, Boy doesn’t know this until she gives birth to her baby girl, Bird, who is recognizably (recognizably?) black.

But that’s not the weird part. Here’s the thing, there’s no weird part to Boy, Snow, Bird. It’s just weird.

I would call it an acid trip of a book, but the structure is too tight. I would say Boy, Snow, Bird is uneven except it’s not. It’s… what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh yeah, weird.

It’s weird in the way a weird person is, and you want to stare, but you’re desperate not to make eye contact. And you start a little obsession even though you can’t put your finger on exactly why she is so fascinating. So, when you finally walk away, having secretly absorbed all you can in a limited time, you tell your friends about her, and wonder about her and her life and her family and how she got to be that way and what she’s doing right now. You know? Right?

Oyeyemi’s language is beautiful, frequently dipping into the imagery of fairy tales: “Insects dropped onto my shoulders, tentatively, as if wondering whether we’d met.” And, “Let spiders spin webs in my hair. It’d be great if they could be persuaded to spin little hats for her, dusty towers of thread that lean and whisper.” Also this: “Light fell through the leaves, liquid in some places, sometimes stopping to hang in long necklaces — but only for a second or two, as if aware it wouldn’t get much admiration in Flax Hill.”

It’s all fairy tale-y, but then someone will say something so true of everyday life, it makes you want to create a meme: “The first coffee of the morning is never, ever, ready quickly enough.” Have truer words ever been spoken? And this: “I have plenty of people around me to talk to, and no one to be honest with.” Sad but true. But this! THIS! I just want someone to love me like this: “…he sometimes says my name as if it were a lesser-known word for bacon.” Mmmm… bacon.

Oyeyemi keeps a lot of things going on in a relatively short novel. Fairy Tale, social criticism, gender norms and politics, women’s lib (I want the phrase to make a comeback). She writes different sections of the book in first, second or third person, sometimes all three. And different styles. The adults seem to speak like people in movies from the 30’s. People end sentences with “…, you say.”

At the half-way point of the book I started to wonder how it would all end. I was assuming something gory, Grimm fairy tale-like, yet profound. But the third part of the book come out of nowhere. And ends in a cliff hanger. Maybe? I’m not sure. Weird.

A version of this review was originally posted on Julia in Austin.