Bookish Thoughts

I came to write this review and I'm suddenly realizing that I barely remember this book. Which is weird. It hasn't been that long since I read it. I expected it to stick with me longer than this. Oyeyemi's work generally does (I'm still haunted by certain sentences in Mr. Fox ). And I guess that ought to inform this review. There were a few stories in here that stuck with me, for good or ill. The first one, Books and Roses , was amazing and deserves a re-read to untangle all the different layers. Is Your Blood as Red as This? is also lodged in my memory, but more because it's weird than because I enjoyed it. And other stories have escaped my memory completely. I know that I enjoyed reading this book. And maybe it was just that I was too tired, or trying to fit it around caring for Gavin in a way that didn't work. The stories weren't really long enough to sink into completely, but they were too long for me to read any of them in a single sitting. Except ...

Boy, Snow, Bird  is Helen Oyeyemi's latest book and the third one of hers that I've read. It got a lot of attention last year, and after I fell deeply in love with  Mr. Fox , I had to pick this one up. This one didn't speak to me on quite the level that  Mr. Fox  did, and I really didn't like the ending, but it's overall a good book and an interesting meditation on race and womanhood. This story uses the framework of Snow White to comment on beauty and families and secrets. Boy doesn't set out to become a wicked stepmother, and she sort of redeems herself by the end, but she does send Snow away, jealous on some level of her beauty. Snow was born to a couple who were both from light-skinned black families. They had fled the south for Massachusetts, where they were able to pass as white. And the whole family was overjoyed when Snow was born lighter than anyone else in the family, beautiful and with a life of opportunities ahead of her. Of course her mother die...

Every now and then you come across a book that seems like it was written just for you. Helen Oyeyemi's  Mr. Fox  is, as I mentioned, a retelling of the English folktale, Mr. Fox. It's more than that, though, bringing in elements of Bluebeard and Fitcher's Bird. Reynardine makes a significant enough appearance that I went to look him up. There are probably other, similar folktales woven through that I didn't recognize. Oyeyemi is amazingly well-researched. And her ability to weave together all these tales, to find the common threads, is amazing. Although the structure of the book certainly lends itself to a multitude of related tales. Mr. Fox  centers on a famous author, St. John Fox, who has a habit of of killing the women in his stories. He has a wife named Daphne, who appears passive at first ("I fixed her early", Mr. Fox claims. "I told her in heartfelt tones that one of the reasons I love her is because she never complains. So now of course she ...

My book club decided on Helen Oyeyemi's  White is for Witching  this month, and I was excited to have an excuse to revisit it. This is a difficult book that I was confounded by when I first read it. I figured going in knowing more or less what happened would make it easier to digest. It did and it didn't. I think I understood a lot more of this book by virtue of knowing what was coming. But I still feel like I missed a whole lot. Part of this is probably because Oyeyemi packs so much into a really short book. At less than 230 pages, there isn't room for a lot to happen. And really, not much does. Miranda's pica is exacerbated by her mother's untimely death. She spends some time recovering in a psychiatric hospital, finishes high school, and spends a semester at college before her health forces her to drop out again. It's barely a plot at all, more like a slice of life. Around the edges, Oyeyemi explores a number of themes, many of which at least overlap. The...

Helen Oyeyemi's novel White is for Witching is one of those books that get better the more I think about it. This could be because I struggled a bit while reading it. The book is a mystery, and I didn't have a firm grasp of the plot until 150 pages in to this 200 page book. But once I figured out what was going on, a lot of other stuff fell into place. Given that, it's really hard to talk about this book without spoiling anything, except to say that it's beautiful and different. It deals with a wealth of issues, from eating disorders to immigration, racism to sexual identity, family legacies to obsession. These themes are mostly subtle, but once the truth of the mystery is revealed, they become a lot more powerful. Like I said, the more I think about this book, the more layers I see. One of the most interesting things about this book is that I cannot tell you, with any confidence, how many narrators there are. Miranda is the central character. Both he...