Boy, Snow, Bird - Softcover

Helen Oyeyemi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1447254228 ISBN 13: 9781447254225

Publisher: Picador, 2014

Synopsis

BOY Novak turns twenty and decides to try for a brand-new life. SNOW is mild-mannered, and cherished - exactly the sort of little girl Boy never was. When BIRD is born Boy is forced to re-evaluate the image Arturo's family have presented to her, and Boy, Snow and Bird are broken apart. This novel is about three women and an unbreakable bond.

About this title

Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, March 2014: After escaping the cruel wrath of her abusive father, Boy Novak finds comfort in a small Massachusetts suburb and a widower named Arturo, whom she later marries. Boy is quite taken with Arturo's daughter Snow, but it's the daughter she has with Arturo that complicates their quiet lives--Bird's birth reveals that both Arturo and Boy are light-skinned African-Americans passing for white. Harkening back to the great passing narratives, like Charles W. Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition and, most notably, Passing by Nella Larsen, Boy, Snow, Bird is about both the exterior and interior complexities of racial identity. The perception of Arturo and Boy's race and social class is threatened by Bird. But it's the psychological conflicts that are the most devastating. Arturo was raised with "the idea that there was no need to ever say, that if you knew who you were then that was enough, that not saying was not the same as lying." Is passing dishonest if it isn't an active decision? Boy, Snow, Bird is a retelling of Snow White, and the wit and lyricism of Helen Oyeyemi's prose shares the qualities of a fable. But this novel isn't content to conclude with an easy moral. In fact, Oyeyemi complicates the themes she establishes. Her writerly charms shouldn't be taken for granted; the beauty of her writing hides something contemplative and vital, waiting to be uncovered by readers. --Kevin Nguyen

About the Author

Helen Oyeyemi is the author of The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House, White is for Witching (which won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award), and Mr Fox. In 2013, Helen was included in Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Boy, Snow, Bird is Helen's fifth novel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1447254228
• ISBN 13: 9781447254225
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 308