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White is for Witching: A Novel

by Helen Oyeyemi

3.33 · rating details · 341 ratings · 99 reviews

“Miranda is at home—homesick, home sick ...”

As a child, Miranda Silver developed pica, a rare eating disorder that causes its victims to consume nonedible substances. The death of her mother when Miranda is sixteen exacerbates her condition; nothing, however, satisfies a strange hunger passed down through the women in her family. And then there’s the family house in Dover,

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Hardcover, 224 pages

Published June 23rd 2009 by Nan A. Talese

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Oct 30, 2010

Blair rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: ghostly-and-magical, mystery-thriller-etc

White is for Witching is a strange but rather beautiful book. It's a story about lots of things - the fragility of family relationships, the bond between twins, sexuality, racial prejudice - but at the same time it isn't really about any of these. The unfinished themes are held together by Oyeyemi's prose, which is fluid, lyrical and reads almost like poetry at some points. The narrative is unconventional and initially hard to follow, as it switches between different viewpoints without explainin...moreWhite is for Witching is a strange but rather beautiful book. It's a story about lots of things - the fragility of family relationships, the bond between twins, sexuality, racial prejudice - but at the same time it isn't really about any of these. The unfinished themes are held together by Oyeyemi's prose, which is fluid, lyrical and reads almost like poetry at some points. The narrative is unconventional and initially hard to follow, as it switches between different viewpoints without explaining which is which (oh, and one of the narrators is a house...) although I got used to this quite quickly.

The thing I found most frustrating about the story is that it's impossible to tell what is real and what is not when it comes to the supernatural element regarding the Silver family's house. It's made clear that there is a strong history of mental illness in the Silver women, but what actually ends up happening to them is a mystery. Is the house really haunted by Miranda's great-grandmother, or are the apparent manifestations of this a product of Miranda's damaged imagination? The fact that Ore, in her own narrative, appears to experience some of the house's power would suggest there really is some kind of evil presence, but some scenes segue into things that can't possibly be happening - if the house/Anna narrative is true, Sade should be dead, but she later reappears more or less alive and well. Are all the narrators unreliable, including the third-person one? It's a fascinating, but mind-boggling question. Personally, I don't think this is a supernatural tale as much as it is a story about actual madness and the madness of relationships and love. Something that slightly annoyed me was that Miranda's character is such a cliché - a mentally disturbed young woman, described as looking so wasted and ill as to be on the verge of death, yet everyone somehow finds her beautiful and falls in love with her... Ultimately, the truth about Miranda's fate (murdered because of her connection with the Kosovan refugees? 'Taken' by the house? Committed suicide?) remains a mystery.

Fittingly, this is a bewitching tale and a great winter read. Dover and Cambridge are brought to life effortlessly and everything flows so well that you believe in all of it. There are numerous plot holes and unfinished strands, but the prose is so spellbinding that you don't notice this until after you finish reading and start thinking back over everything that's happened - and there is a LOT to think about; it would be fascinating to study and analyse, and would be a perfect book club choice as it can be interpreted in so many different ways and I imagine this would make for some great discussions. A beautifully written book, but beware - you may find it frustrating.(less)

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Jan 13, 2010

Sarah rated it

· review of another edition

Sometimes when I'm reading a book, it's so out there that it makes me feel stupid. I think, "I bet a city woman on a subway would understand this thing." Or at least fake it. I can see this book being the subject of coffee table chatter at cocktail hour or at a ivy league campus book club, but not anywhere close to Paris, Illinois. Why? Because it's darn confusing. There are three narrators--Minerva, a yougn lady who suffers from pica (eating stuff like clay and chalk), Ore, a girlfrie...more

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Jan 03, 2010

Theri rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2009, favourites

First of all, I have to get this out of the way. I am in awe and more than just a little bit jealous of Helen Oyeyemi. She is phenomenally talented and has published four extraordinary and lyrical novels, of which White is for Witching is definitely my favorite. Rarely does a book get under my skin like this one did.

On the very first page you discover that Miranda Silver has vanished, leaving behind her mystified and scared family. Miranda was a strange and disturbed girl, prone to ...moreFirst of all, I have to get this out of the way. I am in awe and more than just a little bit jealous of Helen Oyeyemi. She is phenomenally talented and has published four extraordinary and lyrical novels, of which White is for Witching is definitely my favorite. Rarely does a book get under my skin like this one did.

On the very first page you discover that Miranda Silver has vanished, leaving behind her mystified and scared family. Miranda was a strange and disturbed girl, prone to nightmares and hallucinations. She also suffered from a bizarre eating disorder called Pica, and existed almost entirely on a diet of non-edible items like chalk.

White is for Witching is told from three very different voices as they try to make sense of what has happened to Miranda (though one knows a lot more than the other two). The first narrative comes from Eliot, Miranda’s twin brother. The second is from Ore, Miranda’s only friend, who is obsessed with the soucouyant (or succubus) myth. The third narrative is the most unnerving as it comes from the house itself. The Silver House delves into the tragic history of the Silver women and the part it has played in their deaths or disappearances, as well as the secrets that it keeps from outsiders.

The house is also angered by Miranda’s father turning it into a bed and breakfast full of strangers, and it frequently takes its ire out on the foreign housemaid and unsuspecting guests in nasty and malicious ways. I’m a sucker for things that defy logic when it comes to space and/or time (House of Leaves, the TARDIS etc) and the Silver House is a formidable character here. Though Miranda initially dismisses a letter from two young girls who have suffered from one of the house’s terrifying pranks, their warning is alarmingly simple and apt: “This house is bigger than you know! There are extra floors, with lots of people on them.”

With White is for Witching, Oyeyemi manages to weave together a mixture of different horrors. Some are supernatural and esoteric, and some are mundane. Others are based more firmly in reality and explore things like Dover’s hostile attitude towards foreigners, and a mysterious serial-killer who preys on Kosovan refugees. At the heart of it all, I would consider it a story about a haunted house but with a completely unique and original twist. There is something very unconventional and disquieting about this book. I fell in love with it from the first chapter, and it is really quite a chilling tale. (less)

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Oct 21, 2009

Amanda rated it

Recommends it for: Oriana Leckert

Recommended to Amanda by: Saba Afshar, Amy Sly

The daughters of the Silver family are cursed with a hunger for things that do not nourish. The Silver girls absently smear their mouths with handfuls of dirt, lick chalk from secret pocket stashes, nibble on plastic spoons beneath the sheets. The family home in Dover holds them through their suffering, unfolds for them and keeps them together. Part One of White is for Witching, "curiouser," begins with the return to Dover of eighteen-year-old Miranda Silver, an ethereal chalk-eater in...more

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Oct 13, 2011

Maria Headley rated it

· review of another edition

This is the first book I'd read by Helen Oyeyemi, and I instantly had to purchase everything else. Girl has a way with words, a way with weird, and a way with witching. It kills me, full on kills me that she is writing like this and she's only, dear god, 26 years old. (And moan, I think she wrote this one when she was 23.) I'd possibly die of jealousy, except that she's completely amazing, and you know what? It's in the world's interest to have writers this good working in it. I think Oyeyemi is...moreThis is the first book I'd read by Helen Oyeyemi, and I instantly had to purchase everything else. Girl has a way with words, a way with weird, and a way with witching. It kills me, full on kills me that she is writing like this and she's only, dear god, 26 years old. (And moan, I think she wrote this one when she was 23.) I'd possibly die of jealousy, except that she's completely amazing, and you know what? It's in the world's interest to have writers this good working in it. I think Oyeyemi is going to win gigantic prizes. Right now, she's doing work that writers twice her age only wish they could do. Her voice is utterly unique, and though there are slight hitches in her work, the hitches are so slight, and the work so mindblowing, that any troubles in her books are completely forgivable. Problems of bounty, as I've said in a previous review - that of Chris Adrian's The Great Night, are much less troubling to me than are problems of starkness.

The basic outlines of the story involve Miranda Silver and her fraternal twin Eliot, whose closely merged lives are, in the wake of both tragedy, and also simply because of growing up, beginning to diverge. Miranda has pica - in her case, a hunger for chalk, and plastic - and has melted down emotionally following the death of the twin's mother, Lily. Eliot is hungry for something else, the hunger of many who've come from such close quarters. He's hungry for the world, hungry to get away from his childhood, and from the house he grew up in. The house has its own agenda when it comes to Miranda. It has no intention of letting her go.

White is For Witching reads like a contemporary London hybrid of Shirley Jackson's fantastically creepy too-close-too-ruined sister story We Have Always Lived in the Castle and, oh, what? Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Herland? Maybe throw in a little Lorca, a little House Of Bernarda Alba. There are four generations of women in this book, and none of them end well. There's also this house, which has its own opinions and goals, and its own voice. Sometimes the book is narrated by the house. Need I say that the house is bloody scary?

It's a victory of storytelling. Oyeyemi balances multiple POV's very tidily - those of Eliot, Miranda, Miranda's lover Ore, and of the house itself. It's also a heartbreaker. Miranda transforms over the course of the novel, unwillingly, from a fairy tale heroine to a monster, to at last, Snow White, but a Snow White whose prince will never come. Oyeyemi doesn't pull punches here. Her ending isn't a relief, but a collapsing certainty. You know that things will not end well from the first pages of the book. It's no spoiler to say so. The keen pleasure here is in the infinitely imaginative way that Oyeyemi controls her narrative, like an elevator operator holding the pulleys in her hands, easing them down, down, and then with a lurch, letting go. Down into the darkness we tumble.

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Nov 30, 2010

Zen rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: horror, written-by-poc, chicklit, sff

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Wah, I thought this was really very good! Absorbing on a story level and impressive on a literarary level. Also frickin' scary. I went back and read the first chapter after reading the ending. But the ending, sigh, I find it a bit unsatisfying, I wish there had been a massive impressive showdown with the goodlady/soucouyant and then after that Ore and Miranda could settle down together and live happily ever after. Maybe Eliot could live with them. Threesome!

Thoughts:

- Twins m...moreWah, I thought this was really very good! Absorbing on a story level and impressive on a literarary level. Also frickin' scary. I went back and read the first chapter after reading the ending. But the ending, sigh, I find it a bit unsatisfying, I wish there had been a massive impressive showdown with the goodlady/soucouyant and then after that Ore and Miranda could settle down together and live happily ever after. Maybe Eliot could live with them. Threesome!

Thoughts:

- Twins must get tired of people thinking they are in love with each other/having sex. I mean, gross. It's funny that this book mentions this meme and then reinforces it.

- The book makes Dover sound pretty and like it would be worth visiting.

- I wanted to know more about Sade!

- Things Oyeyemi is interested in: women, family, history, madness -- feminine madness in particular. Also this interesting repeated idea of the madness/badness living inside a woman, which is part of her in a way that is obscure but also very intuitive. In The Opposite House it is expressed in the line from Vertigo that the main character and her friend repeat to each other ("something inside me wants me to die"). I found it funny because the character in Vertigo was just faking this mystic madness whereas to Oyeyemi's characters it is a very real thing, but it's a good line. There's something in The Icarus Girl, which I'd started reading before I picked this one up and got carried away with it, that reminded me of that line also. Development of a theme. Really you see with her books how it can be effective to tell the same story again and again ... but then these are subjects I personally find deeply interesting. Perhaps other people wouldn't so much.

This is definitely a horror book. (Incidentally I liked very much that it is a horror novel by somebody who has a different perspective on race issues than a white person would ... that scene in the bathroom with "the black coming off" is absolutely terrifying.) I wonder whether Oyeyemi would have been marketed as genre if she were white -- I don't know that she would, because her style is v. literararary, and her themes.

I liked it very very much. Maybe I will give it five stars instead of four.(less)

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Nov 02, 2010

Juushika rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed

Miranda has pica, a disorder which makes her consume non-edibles; her mother's death and strangely sinister family home encourage her ongoing mental deterioration—but however accurate, such a summary does little to introduce this story of a narrating home, unhealthy family, and fragile mental health. White is for Witching is a short, strange, wonderful little book—and that combination is not without fault. The narrative is stylized and apparently fragmented, which makes for an intriguing but dif...moreMiranda has pica, a disorder which makes her consume non-edibles; her mother's death and strangely sinister family home encourage her ongoing mental deterioration—but however accurate, such a summary does little to introduce this story of a narrating home, unhealthy family, and fragile mental health. White is for Witching is a short, strange, wonderful little book—and that combination is not without fault. The narrative is stylized and apparently fragmented, which makes for an intriguing but difficult beginning; it takes some time to adapt to the narrative and for the story to gain momentum. Much of the book's joy lies in subtle characterization and carefully crafted atmosphere, and these aspects also take time to reach fruition. As a result, it isn't until its midpoint that the book really gets going, and that's a drawback in such a short volume. The first half doesn't feel wasted, but it does feel underutilized—and White is the sort of deceptively simple book whose apparent lightness and sparsity belies poetic complexity; it begs for the best possible use of every page.

But in that second half, once things are truly underway, is mesmerizing. Just as apparent sparsity belies complexity, the fragmented narrative belies surprisingly cogent plot and themes. White is a marriage of style and substance: an unusual, sometimes-challenging, shifting voice, original (if occasionally tortured) formatting, and light, haunted, poetic prose; nuanced and compelling characters and interactions, the sort of mysterious, multifaceted plot which forms a solid whole but still begs immediate reread in order to identify those final few aspects, and beautiful themes which straddle mythology and allegory to explore family, alienation, and xenophobia. The book didn't hit me as hard as it did some readers—while haunting, I found some aspects of the book a little too unrealistic to be precisely menacing, and the deadened horror somewhat deadened the overall impact. But White is for Witching has stuck in my thoughts, and the more I read and write about it the more I want to revisit the text, dig in deeper and explore its mysteries a second time. This strange little book has flaws, but it is both intriguing and intelligent, a book to captivating and to inspire thought and dread. I recommend it to those with a taste for horror and the postmodern, and hope that I may reread it myself some day.(less)

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Dec 30, 2009

Felicity rated it

· review of another edition

Oyeyemi, a Nigerian-born English author, is only twenty-five years old. Yet, this is her third book, her first published when she was nineteen. Clearly, Oyeyemi is a major talent. I gave the book three stars because fantasy/supernatural is not always a genre I understand or with which I'm comfortable--I prefer other genres more. Nonetheless, I can appreciate the intricacy of the plot that Oyeyemi weaves, and the precision of her language.

Set (surely ironically) in the English tow...more

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Sep 28, 2009

Matt rated it

· review of another edition

I'm not necessarily a genre reader, esp if we're talking the haunted house neo-gothic like this, so I'll accept that maybe I wasn't the ideal audience for this; I think my interest was in the elements that are outside of genre: something to do with the post-colonial questions of haunting (the review that made me want to read the book, for example, referenced _Beloved_, which doesn't seem totally appropriate), which are, I think, not the primary concerns of this book, aside from some vague and no...more

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Sep 18, 2009

Ele Munjeli rated it

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It's a book about a curse: there is no happy ending. Watching the hapless family swirl down the vortex of historic misdeeds supervised by a sinister domicile, I was reminded of John Wray's book Canaan's Tounge. Oyeyemi lacks his uncanny grasp of history, but she writes well how evil survives. Consumption is the vehicle of expression for the characters in the story: a matrilineal affliction called pica ( eating non-foods, such as chalk, dirt, plastic, etc.) haunts the protagonist. Some of the sce...more

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Mar 18, 2011

Shannon rated it

· review of another edition

So I borrowed this one off a friend who said it was worth a read albeit a bit weird and I'm now walking away from it unsure whether I enjoyed it or not.

The story was narrated from multiple points of view but no clear indication was given as to who that particular chapter was from leaving the reader sifting through the use of pronouns to work out through whose eyes we were looking. The use of the house as a narrator was clever but could have been more explicitly mentioned in the intr...more

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Mar 06, 2011

Courtney rated it

· review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'll start by saying it's hard to give a star rating to a book that I feel so torn about.

Let me explain.

I saw this book in our fiction section at work, liked the cover (yes I am a guilty slave to cover art), liked the sound of the blurb and there was something about it that kept drawing me to it, urging me to pick it up and buy it. I'm poor, however, so I did the naughty and ordered it online. Whatever.

I started to read it and was immediately annoyed with the way i...moreI'll start by saying it's hard to give a star rating to a book that I feel so torn about.

Let me explain.

I saw this book in our fiction section at work, liked the cover (yes I am a guilty slave to cover art), liked the sound of the blurb and there was something about it that kept drawing me to it, urging me to pick it up and buy it. I'm poor, however, so I did the naughty and ordered it online. Whatever.

I started to read it and was immediately annoyed with the way it's written. From page one, I was confused. Firstly, way too prose-y...to the point where it bordered on pretentious. Second, the narrator jumped from Eliot to Ore to "29" (this in particular could have been explained WAY better, I had no idea that the house itself was narrating until a little while into the story) then to a third-person account of Miri's perspective. This made the novel (initially) SO unreadable, I nearly gave up. I persevered only because I liked Eliot's voice and besides, I've always been a sucker for the idea of a haunted/evil house.

I felt that the character of Miri was far too deliberately frail and damaged. The author tried too hard to convey that she was odd and eccentric and it came across and irritating and immature. Perhaps this was intentional, I'm not sure. The issue might be that I've only been out of school for a few years so the idea of a pale, too-thin, scarlet-lipped, misunderstood, chalk-eating, black-clad girl just didn't hit the spot for me at all. I just immediately thought "ATTENTION SEEKER".

However after about 150 pages in, I realised I was actually pretty keen to find out what happened to Miri, where her relationship with Ore was going and what part Ore played in the house's major plan, and where it would all leave Eliot and Luc in the end. I think once the author removed her main characters from the evil bad house and the "goodlady", she was somehow more free to develop our relationship with Miri as readers.

I also loved Sade, I wish she'd had more of a part to play.

One thing I'll say about the ending. It is not happy. It will not make you say "awww!" or clutch the book to your chest and grin like an idiot. You will shut the book, put it down, and with a puzzled look on your face, realise it's 11:30pm and you're suddenly terrified of the four walls surrounding you. You will realise one other thing. Somehow, someway, despite all the moaning you did and suffering you endured, you actually just finished a pretty damn good book. Not great - but satisfying.(less)

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Dec 24, 2010

Ari rated it

· review of another edition

This is a weird book. The writing style is both spectacular and frustrating. The author picks seemingly random words to both end the first sentence and start the first sentence but they aren't connected. Like so: "she heard the clatter of cutlery, she heard the whir of
the lift
broke down in the night." (pg. 35) It's a very cool writing style and new-to-me. Not sure if other authors do it. The writing can be frustrating though because it can be confusing. It's not always cl...moreThis is a weird book. The writing style is both spectacular and frustrating. The author picks seemingly random words to both end the first sentence and start the first sentence but they aren't connected. Like so: "she heard the clatter of cutlery, she heard the whir of
the lift
broke down in the night." (pg. 35) It's a very cool writing style and new-to-me. Not sure if other authors do it. The writing can be frustrating though because it can be confusing. It's not always clear whose talking (the house, Miranda, Eliot, Ore?). Also a large chunk of the book has nothing to do with Ore so I'm not even sure why she's mentioned. Although she does become quite important in the end. The writing/plot can become frustrating because it's full of hidden meanings and half truths. Nothing is ever fully revealed so you have to draw your own conclusions on nearly everything. Due to this, I never felt that I truly got to know any of the characters either. They simply remained names on the page who were described quite a bit, but I just didn't have a distinct grasp of their personality (aside from everyone worrying about how odd Miranda was getting). Furthermore, I could not understand why people were attracted to Miranda. In part because I couldn't figure out her personality but also because she ate chalk and other inedible objects and she was extremely thin and could be off-putting. Mystifying, especially when she says things like this "[s]he peered up and down the broad passageways and tiptoed past the bedroom doors, feeling like dust, as if she were everywhere at once. She could pull herself tight and then explode and choke everyone in the house." (pg. 77). Elegant statement, and yet it's also chillingly mental.

White Is For Witching isn't completely dark. It has a light, almost playful quality to it because the author never flat out describes the horrors that occur in the house, they are merely hinted at. I was also intrigued by how the novel touches on the topic of immigration. I don't know much about England and immigration, but I do know it's a touchy subject and more and more people seem to be anti-immigrant. This book looks at that because the house hates foreigners and sooner or later, the house drives them away (Luc turned the house into an inn). There is a lot of talk of the Kosovans but I know nothing about this particular group of people so I was more than a little lost.I think I understood why the house was so xenophobic though and the reason was fascinating and while I thought it was completely daft, I was able to see the twisted logic. Another popular theme in this book is madness, Eliot states "I've read that madness is present when everything you see and hear takes on an equal significance. A dead bird makes you cry, and so does a doorknob. This morning I was not mad. The only thing significant to me in all the world was the creaking upstairs." (pg. 244). Everyone in this book is slowly going mad in some way and it all seems to come back to Miranda. Perhaps I will revisit this book in the future and better understand it. For now I can appreciate the complexity of the plot, the stunning writing and the questions concerning madness and immigration (even if I don't understand what exactly is being asked or what the answer is). To me the most horrifying thing about this book is how vague and unexpected everything is, the situations described are truly bone-chilling but they are never completely described. It's up to your overactive imagination XD

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Jun 30, 2009

Ab rated it

Shelves: hints-of-magic, precocious-child-protagonist

I've had this book sitting next to my computer for days now. Every time I go to write a review of it, I put it off because I'm afraid I won't be able to do it justice. This. Book. Was. Amazing. Oyeyemi is a MASTERFUL writer! Every time I read her, her prose gets more intriguing and absolutely beautiful! I LOVED "Icarus Girl," while "The Opposite House" wasn't as good, but this book . . . I want to read it again IMMEDIATELY!

Before explaining the story, I tabbed the...moreI've had this book sitting next to my computer for days now. Every time I go to write a review of it, I put it off because I'm afraid I won't be able to do it justice. This. Book. Was. Amazing. Oyeyemi is a MASTERFUL writer! Every time I read her, her prose gets more intriguing and absolutely beautiful! I LOVED "Icarus Girl," while "The Opposite House" wasn't as good, but this book . . . I want to read it again IMMEDIATELY!

Before explaining the story, I tabbed the book all over noting great imagery and descriptions, so I'll include some here:

"Why do people go to these places, these places that are not for them?
It must be that they believe in their night vision. They believe themselves able to draw images up out of the dark.
But black wells only yield black water." (p. 8)

"Our new house had two big brown grids of windows with a row of brick in between each grid. No windows for the attic. From the outside the windows didn't look as if they could be opened, they didn't look as if they werw there to let air or light in, they were funny square eyes, friendly, tired." (p. 14)

"The only criticism she would have accepted was that she was giving patriarchy precedence over the female consciousness explored in the Gothic. But since that criticism wasn't offered, she stood her ground. She didn't remember her interviewers after the fact of her interviews -- the professors didn't have features, they were learnedness dressed up as people and housed in armchairs." (p. 50)

And there's so much more, I just can't explain it in pieces, just read the whole thing!!

So the story is about a family living in an old house in Dover -- fraternal twins Miri (Miranda) and Eliot, Luc (father), Lily (mother, deceased only a year ago while shooting photographs in Haiti). The chapters alternate their points of view: Miranda, Eliot, and the House. The House is the most intriguing (I even feel compelled to capitalize "House"). Sade is a housekeeper who has Yoruban superstitions and mysticism surrounding her, and replaces a Russian famiy after they've fled the house, saying no one should stay there. Did I mention it's a bed and breakfast? Miri has pica, which is a disease where one hungers -- HUNGERS -- for inedible things to eat. She loves chalk and plastic. Everyone is . . . well, odd. Odd in a totally intriguing and mystifying way. Odd in a way that keeps you wanting to find out more about them. The fact that the House is a narrator is FANTASTIC! Thus enters the 'creepy' factor, because the house feels protective over the women of the family, going back three generations. Apparently it houses GrandAnna (the twins' great grandmother), Jennifer (twins' grandmother, thought to have run away from Lily at a young age, but the house claims it kept her in a maze of unknown floors and rooms), and now Lily (twins' mother). And now it wants Miri, to protect her and care for her.

You simply have to read it to get the full effect. There are some wonderful stylistic details that Oyeyemi uses for the first time in her books, like one word to transition between one narrator or moment to a completely new on, both using the same word! She reminds me a bit of Toni Morrison and how she wrote in "Beloved," which I found creepy and wonderful. But she keeps her own style and her own artistic sense as well. (less)

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Mar 29, 2010

Zach rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: race, horror

I love that the first review of this book is some nonsense about how you'd have to be a "a city woman on a subway" to "understand this thing." The dopey folksiness of this assertion aside, there actually isn't much here to get-this feels more like a framework that had been fleshed out at some points than an actual novel.

Anyway this is the story of two twins, Eliot and Miranda Silver, who live in a xenophobic haunted house. Like Britain, see? It (the house, which i...more

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Jan 26, 2012

Darlene rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2012-books

I chose this book for the January Task of the 2012 Versatile Reading Challenge, which was to read a book by a Nigerian author. It won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award.

This is quite possibly the oddest book that I have ever read!

The central character to the story is Miranda, an 18 year-old girl whose mother has recently passed away. She is a strange girl who is afflicted with pica, which her mother and grandmother suffered from as well.

The book has multiple narrators:...more

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Aug 11, 2009

Betsy rated it

· review of another edition

While I think the subject matter of this book is engaging, for me, the narrative style was not. I felt that this short book (227 pages) was like wading through mud because I would start reading a passage and think it was being told by one narrator only to discover, by context, that it was a different one of the narrators. I think it would have been helpful if there had been an editorial choice to make it clearer when the narrator changed, via different fonts, or the narrator's name/address at th...more

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Jan 20, 2012

Sam rated it

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We all look for books but sometimes books look for us; this one found me.

White is for Witching isn't your everyday mystery/horror novel; this is a unique and powerful body of work, tinged with melancholy, obsession and fear. I've never read anything like it.

At once a challenge to read because of its unusual narrative but at the same time, an engrossing read because of its strangeness, this book engages you on levels that you weren't expecting to be there, much like leve...more

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Sep 01, 2009

karen rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: littry-fiction, my-biggest-fear

i read this. im not sure how to review it. like the other things i have read by her, she shows a great flair for foreboding and atmosphere but the end is a void. im not sure what this book is. its not a traditional story, its kind of fairy-tale-like, but even that... there are characters who are involved heavily, and then they are absent from the narrative, never to return. i guess in that way, it is like the never knowing when the last time you will see someone will be. but in a novel, i have c...more

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Aug 02, 2009

Liza rated it

Shelves: adult-fiction

This book is absolutely hauntingly strange.

I'm not sure I liked it (it's more the kind of book you tell everyone about and vividly remember reading instead of actually liking), and I'm not sure that I'll clamor to read anything else by this author, but I'm very impressed. I had planned on going to bed early this evening, and instead stayed up and read the last three quarters of the book because I just couldn't stop.

It took me a good 20 pages to get into the author's styl...more

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Feb 01, 2012

Ivy-noelle rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, favorites, horror-sci-fi

I think I'm in love with Helen Oyeyemi. Having read "Mr. Fox" and "The Opposite House" in a matter of days, I was surprised to find how difficult it was for me to get through "White is For Witching"- not because the book was bad, but because it was so oppresively creepy that I had to put it down and make sure not to read it too close to going to sleep at night. In a haunting, gothic narrative, Oyeyemi explores the life of two twins - Eliot and Miranda- who, for all ...more

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Jan 17, 2011

Rachel Lewis rated it

· review of another edition

White is for Witching begins with the disappearance of Miranda Silver, a mentally-ill young woman, then goes backwards in time to tell her story from early childhood, when she first comes to live in her great-grandmother's house.

The book has a wonderful, very creepy beginning, in which 3 characters (Elliot, Miranda's twin brother, Ore, who we don't find out about until later, and 29 Barton Road, the house) give their answers to 3 questions: What happened to Miranda? Is she alive? Wha...more

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Jul 06, 2009

GillyP rated it

· review of another edition

Probably the hardest book I’ve ever tried to review. White is for witching is an enticing, complex and often perplexing read. The writing is exquisite but a little too intoxicated with itself for my taste, the twisty, high-metaphorical style making the story far more confusing than it really needs to be. I felt throughout that the writer was reaching to be elusive and mysterious when she really didn’t need to be – the wonderful writing and the story were enough.

I also thought the mul...more

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Jan 01, 2012

Laura (Roses and Vellum) rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: horror-gothic, our-world, magic, 2011-since-joining-goodreads-only

Review from my blog, http://rosesandvellum.blogspot.com/

White is For Witching is a story told from many viewpoints by many characters, but mostly it is the story of Miranda Silver. Her disappearance is an open secret throughout the story, that begins with her disappearance and then goes back in time, recalling through her point of view and that of others that knew and loved her, the circumstances that led to it.

This is a story that interweaves dark magical legends with hu...moreReview from my blog, http://rosesandvellum.blogspot.com/

White is For Witching is a story told from many viewpoints by many characters, but mostly it is the story of Miranda Silver. Her disappearance is an open secret throughout the story, that begins with her disappearance and then goes back in time, recalling through her point of view and that of others that knew and loved her, the circumstances that led to it.

This is a story that interweaves dark magical legends with human frailty, to create a lushly written and very engrossing narrative. I finished it in three days, barely able to put it down, except when my eyes got too tired. All of the characters intrigued me, each being unique, and feeling like a real person to me. Many of them had those fascinating little quirks you find in people that are so enchanting. The house itself was a character, which was very interesting. It sounds a bit silly to say it, but believe me, it really works in the story!

Miranda suffers from an illness called Pika, which is passed on through the female line of her family. It is a hunger to eat items that are not food. Therefore, she craves things like plastic, dirt and chalk. Chalk is her especial favourite. Her addiction to these foods forms an important part of this dark and moody narrative.

I really can't talk too much about the plot, because there are so many things you should discover for yourself. Helen Oyeyemi is a truly talented author, and this book was a true delight to read!

I can't find a website for Helen, but here is a short bio in her own words from the White Is For Witching webpage:

"I grew up in Deptford, South-East London, where the Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe was stabbed to death in a pub. There was also a church with a very detailed carving called 'The Valley of the Dry Bones' by the master carver Grinling Gibbons. There were also plague pits, and a tree that could be used to summon the shade of John Evelyn (around and around and 'John Evelyn' ninety-nine times). I've always liked stories, but best of all are the ones about battles undertaken out of ordinary sight - battles all the scarier and all the fiercer because only the people fighting them understand what's at stake: The Snow Queen, and also Marianne Dreams, about a girl who finds it harder and harder to wake from sleep as the sense of menace in her dreams increases...

I love Emily Dickinson's writing. She said her poems were songs caused by fear. I like Dracula because the first time I read it it took away my courage to fall asleep for a whole week. And its different narrators made me think about monstrosity and wonder what it could mean. I liked The Golem too, because it asks what a person does when they discover themselves to be a monster.

In 2006 I graduated from university, and that summer I did some volunteering in South Africa, where I caught flu and spent a lot of time in a dark-ish room with no Internet, feverishly rereading Dracula. After all that I began to write this book. I hope you like it.

Helen Oyeyemi"(less)

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Jul 26, 2009

Jennifer rated it

I happened by this book in the library and was so immediately intrigued by the title and cover that I thought what the heck? It was fun to take a chance on an author I had never heard of and a story completely off the radar of popular fiction.

It's a tough story to summarize, reading the synopsis is advised. From the start, I wasn't quite sure where the story was taking me. Is the character Miranda simply going mad and what I'm reading are the hallucinations of a troubled mind or is ...more

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Feb 02, 2012

Amber rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: required-reading, favorites

This is the sort of book I could never explain. It is mildly complicated, and you really have to pay attention or you'll feel very lost, which I discovered when I rushed through the last 30 pages (class time constraints) and had to backtrack.
However, it is well worth the effort. This book has so many layers and concepts to it, so much symbolism and intricate language. There are some sentences and passages that you have to read twice -- they just make you go "wow".
We are ...more

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Oct 19, 2011

Christina rated it

· review of another edition

This book is so confusing. You read and read hoping that in some point there will be an explanation - even a small one. But no,for the most part of reading I was really trying to understand the meaning beneath the words. Oyeyemi writes so beautifully, beautiful words, magical comparisons, the way she writes was the only thing that kept me reading - it really inspired me even if the story was complicated.

What wa that with Jennifer and the closet? What was going on with these apples? Wha...more

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Apr 14, 2011

Linda rated it

Shelves: death-in-the-family, female-friendships, fiction, ghosts, horror, malevolent-architecture, supernatural, queer, unhealthy-diets, witches

Like Shirley Jackson, Helen Oyeyemi's writing focuses on small moments of terror and wrongness, the creeping horror of something gone bad beneath the surface. White is for Witching is a neo-gothic brooding ghost(ish) story about a British girl with pica, the need to eat chalk and other inedible substances, and the familial house that may or may not have something to do with her disorder.

Written in at least four voices (the main character, her twin brother, her lover, and the house), ...more

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Nov 30, 2009

Jordan Price rated it

This book is hard to rate for me. It was a heady 4/5 in some ways but a dismal 2/3 in others. I loved the feeling of place, of a Britain that's multicultural and not so squeaky clean. I loved Miri's bizarre illness. I liked the subtlety of the characters.

But I suppose I like a more traditional character arc where something happens at the end that feels like an ending, or an arrival, or something other than a meandering off.

So for character and plot, a yay. For story arc a...more

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Jul 07, 2009

Liviu rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: 2009_release_read, review_fbc, read_2009, genre-fantasy, top_25_2009_novels

This is a magical book about a strange house, its matrilineal occupants that somehow become part of it and the latest girl scion Miranda.

Told through first person narratives from her twin brother Eliot, her college girlfriend Ore and the house itself 29 Barton Rd (!) as well in a direct 3rd person Miranda POV and mixing voices as well as using other literary tricks like a word that simultaneously ends a paragraph and begins a new one, not to speak of twisting upon itself so the begin...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Lush Library: White is for Witching - SPOILER thread	18	12	Nov 26, 2011 09:15am
Lush Library: White is for Witching - progress and non spoiler thread	25	14	Nov 21, 2011 02:56pm
Lush Library: White is for Witching - questions SPOILERS	10	11	Nov 15, 2011 04:48pm
Lush Library: White is for Witching - Who's going to read along?	25	20	Nov 01, 2011 12:38pm

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About Helen Oyeyemi

Helen Oyeyemi is a British novelist and playwright. She was born in Nigeria in 1984 and raised in London. She wrote her widely acclaimed first novel, The Icarus Girl, before her nineteenth birthday; she graduated from Cambridge University in 2006.

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Books by Helen Oyeyemi

Juniper's Whitening and Victimese (Methuen Drama)

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