I received Boy, Snow, Bird from an earlier CBR book exchange, but it had been collecting dust for a few years. I finally had a reason to pick it back up when my Mocha Girls Read book club selected it for a fairytale’s retold theme. Helen Oyeyemi’s novel is a VERY loose version of Snow White set in the 1950s. Boy Novak runs away to a small town to escape her abusive father. She meets a man named Arturo who isn’t quite a prince, but he […]
Modern Fairytale. Race Relations. Intriguing premise, flat execution.
Ohhhhh boy. This book. This was the last pick of the local library book club of the year, and it was much anticipated. It has received much acclaim, NPR said great things about it, and but for me, and my book club, it widely missed the mark. It was NOT loved. Or liked even. At this club we (about 16 folks) go around the room and give a score to a scale of 5 and this one didn’t even get past three. And there were a […]
Meh. A lot.
I’m supposed to like this book. I like things that are a bit bizarre. I like England (where it is set). And everyone seems to rave about both this author and this book. So I’ve clearly – once again – missed something. And yet… I should have known. The blurb on the front, from The Boston Globe, is “Profoundly chilling…a slow-building neo-Gothic that will leave persevering readers breathless.” Did you catch that? “persevering readers.” Apparently I was in for a bit of a slog. A book that […]
Keys and Locks
This collection of short stories by Helen Oyeyemi is a mix of fairy tale and the modern world, of the fanciful and the dark, with a generous portion of sexuality thrown in. In some ways, it reminds me of Angela Carter’s work, but Oyeyemi’s stories, while dealing with heavy themes such as betrayal, abandonment and disappointment, maintain a lightness. Her characters demonstrate a quality that’s not exactly optimism, but a willingness to carry on, a good natured fatalism that tempers the darkness. The nine stories […]