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White is for Witching

Helen Oyeyemi (Goodreads Author)

3.58 · Rating details · 7,968 ratings · 1,333 reviews

In a vast, mysterious house on the cliffs near Dover, the Silver family is reeling from the hole punched into its heart. Lily is gone and her twins, Miranda and Eliot, and her husband, the gentle Luc, mourn her absence with unspoken intensity. All is not well with the house, either, which creaks and grumbles and malignly confuses visitors in its mazy rooms, forcing winter ...more

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ebook, 244 pages

Published June 1st 2009 by Picador USA

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Lists with This Book

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Female-Authored Weird Fiction

310 books — 107 voters

Haunted Houses

484 books — 529 voters

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· 7,968 ratings · 1,333 reviews

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Sep 01, 2009 karen rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: my-biggest-fear

i read this. i'm 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. i'm not sure what this book is. it's not a traditional story, it's 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 real-life situation of never knowing when the last time you will see someone will b ...more

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Oct 13, 2011 Maria Headley rated it it was amazing

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 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 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.

...more

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May 08, 2012 Richard Derus rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: 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, England, converted to a bed-and-breakfast by Miranda’s father. Dover has long been known for its hostility toward outsiders. But t ...more

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Dec 19, 2018 Beverly rated it it was ok

Okay, I finished this. It was only 200 pages or so. I read another one by her that I liked a bit better. Both books have lovely cover art and great titles, the other book was Boy, Snow, Bird. This one has a creepy house which is given a voice in the narrative which I really liked. Basically it is about a haunted house which likes to keep its female owners around itself even after death and encouraged said women to hasten their deaths. Narrative structure and clarity is not to be found here altho ...more

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Mar 12, 2019 Joey Woolfardis rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ahreet, literary, sterling, 2019, bookshelf, feminine, own, ce21

A lyrical book about a house that keeps its women captive. Miri has pica: the name for an urge to eat things that aren't food. Throughout the book we follow her downward spiral, through deep illness to attempted revelry at university, alongside her twin brother and widow father.

It's an interesting book. At first, the stilted chapters and flow of chapters had me a little hooked, but by the end they become boring and a little tedious to work out whom is narrating each little bit. Perhaps the who d ...more

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May 21, 2016 Rowena rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: gothic, woman-authors

“I am here, reading with you. I am reading this over your shoulder. I make your home home, I’m the Braille on your wallpaper that only your fingers can read–I tell you where you are. Don’t turn to look at me. I am only tangible when you don’t look.”- The house in Helen Oyeyemi’s “White is For Witching”

Although I bought an Oyeyemi book a few years ago, this is actually the first book of hers that I’ve read. I really enjoyed it although reading the review from the Toronto Star that referred to O ...more

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Jul 15, 2016 Amy | littledevonnook rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult

I was very close to putting this book down as I wasn't getting on with it at all, but I stuck with it and soon found myself falling head over heels!

This one follows the Silver family who run a bed and breakfast in Dover - Luc and the twins, Miranda and Eliot. You soon learn that Lily (the wife and mother) has passed away. Not only has this caused strife within the family, the house appears to be reacting as well. We soon learn that generations of the Silver family women are living within the wal ...more

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Dec 03, 2019 Michelle rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Strange and unusual with a malevolent house as a narrator. I have to admit I had a hard time finding my footing with this one and I never truly understood what was happening which made me happy to put it down and a struggle to pick it back up. It took me over a week to finish this very short book.

At least it was a library book. 2 stars!

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Jan 13, 2010 Sarah rated it did not like it

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 girlfriend Minerva ...more

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May 01, 2019 Renee Godding rated it it was ok

Shelves: magical-realism

“ Please tell a story about a girl who gets away.”

So... I’m not too sure how to rate this book...

I can’t say I enjoyed it but to say it was a bad book would be equally as big a lie. This is probably not going to be a coherent review, but more “thoughts on paper”, so feel free to skip this one if you’re looking for a proper review.

This was confusing, yet somehow entrancing, strange, yet somehow familiar and had little plot as far as I could descern. That all pales in comparison to my dominant fe ...more

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Oct 10, 2016 Puck rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Puck by: Charlotte Fong

Shelves: horror, diverse-reads, paranormal, lgbtqia, cover-love

In White is for Witching the classic Gothic story of a haunted house is given new life, but keeps being just as unsettling and dark as the older ones.

Despite what the title suggests, this book doesn’t contain any witches. It’s the eerie and intriguing tale of a young teenage girl named Miranda ‘Miri’ Silver who moves with her twin brother Elliot and her father into a new house after the death of her mother. That old house in Dover has been in the Silver family for generations, and while her brot In White is for Witching the classic Gothic story of a haunted house is given new life, but keeps being just as unsettling and dark as the older ones.

Despite what the title suggests, this book doesn’t contain any witches. It’s the eerie and intriguing tale of a young teenage girl named Miranda ‘Miri’ Silver who moves with her twin brother Elliot and her father into a new house after the death of her mother. That old house in Dover has been in the Silver family for generations, and while her brother and father try to move on with their lives, Miri slowly falls prey to the dark influence of the house.

In this book the writer Helen Oyeyemi has mixed the classic Gothic elements with myths and ideas from her own Nigerian background. This gives the book a unique character and combined with the author’s mysterious writing style, makes this a ghost story that will make your hair stand on end.
The author has a good understanding of “show, don’t tell” and since the story is told from different points of view, by not entirely reliable narrators, you don’t know who to trust or what to believe. Are the spirits of the Silver house really possessing Miri, or is it all a hallucination caused by her mental illness?

So the story is strange and pretty frightening at times, but although Oyeyemi does a great job on describing the shadowy house, the book doesn’t have much of a plot. Besides Miri, very few people become aware that the house is haunted or try to do something about it.
Miri is also a stereotypical ‘ghost-girl’ with pale skin, dark hair and because she suffers from an eating disorder called Pica, she’s very thin and unhealthy looking. She fortunately gets some character development in the second part of the book, but sadly her brother and father remain very flat. Which is a shame, since family (bonds) are such an important theme in this book.

Another thing what bothered me was Miri’s Pica. From what I looked up Pica is a pretty dangerous eating/mental disorder, but nobody seems to treat it seriously in the novel. Elliot and Miri’s father don’t pay close attention to what she eats and only throw away chalk when they find it, as if Pica isn’t something that can kill a person. This leads me to conclude that Oyeyemi played Miri’s Pica for creepiness only…which doesn’t sit quite right with me.

So while the characters are thin (especially Miri) and the storyline isn’t very thrilling, you should read this book alone for Oyeyemi’s tale of the haunted Silver house. Thanks to the author’s cryptic prose the story will get under your skin, just the ghost do to Miri, and keep you reading to find out how it ends.
White is for Witching is like a dark fairy-tale, a bewildering nightmare, and a novel that made me very interested in reading more from Helen Oyeyemi.

3,5 stars and a great book to read this October! #Halloween ...more

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Oct 27, 2010 Blair rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: macabre-slipstream-weird, library-books, mystery-thriller-etc, 2000s-release

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 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 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. ...more

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Feb 22, 2017 Fatma rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: school, lgbtqia

OH THANK GOD ITS FINALLY OVER

First of all, THIS BOOK FRUSTRATED THE CRAP OUT OF ME. It felt like it was trying SO hard to be eerie and suspenseful when in reality it was just straight up confusing. I can't immerse myself in your story if I have ZERO idea what's going on in it. Please don't hurl random occurrences at my face and expect me to feel creeped out; that is not how you create ambiance, creepy or otherwise.

Character-wise, this book was also a complete disaster. Miranda is (supposed to OH THANK GOD ITS FINALLY OVER

First of all, THIS BOOK FRUSTRATED THE CRAP OUT OF ME. It felt like it was trying SO hard to be eerie and suspenseful when in reality it was just straight up confusing. I can't immerse myself in your story if I have ZERO idea what's going on in it. Please don't hurl random occurrences at my face and expect me to feel creeped out; that is not how you create ambiance, creepy or otherwise.

Character-wise, this book was also a complete disaster. Miranda is (supposed to be) your prototypical Quirky girl: she wears super high heels all the time, is always in black, and always wears vibrant red lipstick. (wow, high heels, lipstick, and black clothes. SUPER QUIRKY. -_-) That not Quirky enough for you? Well, fret not dear reader because Miranda also has an eating disorder, Pica, to make her Extra Quirky! Sarcasm aside though, the eating disorder, considering how serious it is, is never really fully addressed, nor are its consequences. Oyeyemi is just like oh, Miranda went to a psychiatric facility for a while for her Pica but now she's back, and even though Miranda's disordered eating continues throughout the book (on top of the fact that her brother continues to enable her), absolutely nothing substantial is said about it or its potential treatment. You can't just capriciously give a character an eating disorder to make them seem interesting and then largely ignore it throughout the rest of the narrative. If you're going to give a character an eating disorder—or any kind of disorder for that matter—then you better make sure you're up to the task of fully and properly representing it.

As for the other characters, they were bland at best and interchangeable at worst. Ore is just kinda there to contrast Miranda's strangeness; Eliot has zero personality apart from the fact that he occasionally says "fuck" and smokes weed (after all, that's what all teenage boys do: say "fuck" and smoke weed!!! That's totally how you write interesting, three-dimensional characters!!!); and Luc, Miranda and Eliot's dad, could've been replaced with a piece of paper for all I cared because that's how flat he was as a character. (Brief tangent: somebody give Luc an award for being the SHITTIEST PARENT OUT THERE because he was so freaking useless in this book. He was never present, and when he was, he was cooking his dumb pastries and avoiding any and all problems.)

To put it lightly, White is for Witching felt less like an atmospheric read to me and more like a phony one. To put it bluntly, EVERYTHING WAS HELLA CONFUSING AND FRUSTRATING AND THINKING ABOUT THIS BOOK ANGERS ME SO I'M GONNA STOP TALKING ABOUT IT NOW

Yeah...I didn't enjoy this very much—at all, really. ...more

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Jun 12, 2013 Sarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, slipstream, favorites, essential-reading

Miranda Silver is in Dover, in the ground beneath her mother’s house.
Her throat is blocked with a slice of apple
(to stop her speaking words that may betray her)
her ears are filled with earth
(to keep her from hearing sounds that will confuse her)
her eyes are closed, but
her heart thrums hard like hummingbird wings.
Does she remember me at all I miss her I miss the way her eyes are the same shade of grey no matter the strength or weakness of the light I miss the taste of her I
see her in my sleep, a ...more

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Mar 01, 2019 Abbie | ab_reads rated it really liked it · review of another edition

3.75 stars

Any fans of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House might want to put Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching on their radar! Or really any fans of any books where a house plays a major role - Rebecca, Salem’s Lot, you get the idea.
.
It’s quite a chilling little book, following twin brother and sister as they try to move on from their home in Devon which their father attempts to run as a guesthouse, onto university, even though they’re both still struggling with the death of their mo ...more

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Oct 05, 2016 Arie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: horror-thriller, everyday-magic, bipoc-rep, bipoc-author, gorgeous-writing

This book is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

As dark as its title is not; haunting is the most useful word to describe it. Oyeyemi is an incredible writer, though in some ways you have to be in the mood for it. Luscious prose that slips in and out of lucidity, characters that are bent and torn and broken yet iron-cored strong.

There is no reliable narrator here. There are multiple possibilities for an ending, but the most satisfying one is where all attachment to this physical, mundane, three-dimen ...more

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Nov 03, 2016 Lotte rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: t-autumn-halloween-reads, a-fiction, t-university, ge-gothic-horror, ge-magical-realism, 2016-read, t-diverse-reads, t-lgbtqia, t-haunted-houses

“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.” This is a quote by Angela Carter that's totally unrelated to this book, but that still fits the themes of the story absolutely perfectly in my opinion.
White is for Witching is a very weird, often times confusing, but ultimately very satisfying read about a haunted house and essentially, a haunted girl. Even though the story has variou ...more

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Apr 20, 2015 Oriana rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2015

I feel really guilty that I didn't review this sooner—it's three months ago that I read it, and already most of it has faded, leaving only a shimmer of a disturbing dark magical feeling. Which, now that I write it out, is fairly apt: this book gets a million stars for its knock-out language and harrowing captivation, but I just never really felt like I understood what it all meant.

Our heroine (such as she is) is Miranda Silver, a gothic waif with swirling dark hair who stumbles about in stiletto ...more

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Jun 06, 2015 Jennifer rated it liked it

Bewildered. Confused. Empty. I was never able to find the rhythm of this. The groove. There were times I did, but I lost it. It was hazy. It slipped away. Sometimes I lost who the narrator was, I had to go back to find him/her/it. Sometimes I lost the time we were in. Maybe it has to to with the stopped watch. Maybe the house was playing tricks on me. Again I had to go back to find it, the time. All this going back was made easy by the delicious sentences. But in the end even those sentences did ...more

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May 09, 2009 Mir added it · review of another edition

Shelves: unfinished

Not for me. Maybe for people with an interest in books about mental illness, who like that subject presented in a sort of mythopoetic manner.

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Jun 28, 2013 Mindi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I thought about this book for a long time last night. After I finished it I turned the light of to go to sleep, and I couldn't turn my brain off. Honestly, this book has sort of been like a dark cloud or shadow following me since I started it. It's weighty, almost claustrophobic, and I felt almost as if I had a literal weight pressing down on me whenever I was reading it.

White is for Witching is not for everyone. If you are looking for straight-up horror, this isn't it. But it is a deeply unsett ...more

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Jun 26, 2009 Kelly rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

White Is for Witching blends gothic horror, racial politics, and the older, bloodier sort of fairy tales into a deeply unsettling novel. The story opens with a passage intentionally reminiscent of "Snow White," describing the mysterious imprisonment? disappearance? death? of the heroine, Miranda Silver. From there, we move backward in time, to the point when the events leading to Miranda's fate began.

The story is told from several points of view, all of them seeing events from different perspect White Is for Witching blends gothic horror, racial politics, and the older, bloodier sort of fairy tales into a deeply unsettling novel. The story opens with a passage intentionally reminiscent of "Snow White," describing the mysterious imprisonment? disappearance? death? of the heroine, Miranda Silver. From there, we move backward in time, to the point when the events leading to Miranda's fate began.

The story is told from several points of view, all of them seeing events from different perspectives, all of them possibly unreliable narrators. Miranda herself, her brother Eliot, her lover Ore, and her ancestral home all have their own versions to tell as the plot unfolds.

The house looms as the center of Miranda's tale. Menacing and xenophobic, it desires control over the people it considers its own, and means harm toward those it sees as foreign. The house and its ghosts want to make Miranda a vessel for their hatred. Miranda struggles against the house's domination, a battle that threatens to destroy her mental health and possibly her life.

Helen Oyeyemi's prose is haunting and poetic. I hesitate to use the word "beautiful," as that might give a false impression of "pleasantness." Oyeyemi depicts nightmares, not pretty dreams. She has a knack for describing ordinary things in a way that makes them suddenly horrific, and when she describes horrific things, she does it in a subtle, oblique way that feels like you're looking at something so unspeakable that you can only look with your peripheral vision:

The University Library is a mouth shut tight, each tooth a book, each book growing over, under and behind the other. The writing desks are placed in front of bookshelves, some of them between bookshelves so that whoever is sitting at the desk gets a feeling of something dusty, intangible and unspeakably powerful, something like God, watching them through tiny gaps in the shelves. People kept trooping past the desk I'd chosen, in search of books and free seats, and within half an hour I'd stopped looking up when someone passed. I wanted to read about the soucouyant. I wanted to write about her, I still do. What do I want to write? Just a book, probably, another tooth for the UL's mouth. Something that explores the meaning of the old woman whose only interaction with other people was consumption. The soucouyant who is not content with her self. She is a double danger — there is the danger of meeting her, and the danger of becoming her.

White Is for Witching works as a novel of the supernatural, and it also works as an allegory. I hesitate to even mention the A-word, for fear of driving away readers who've been burned by preachy authors. Helen Oyeyemi doesn't preach, however. There's a message, but it never overshadows the plot and characters. It's just that you can see an extra dimension to the story if you look through the lens of allegory. ...more

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Mar 11, 2014 Sheri rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, coming-of-age, male-female-power-sex-attractivenes

So, I'm still trying to digest things on this one. Which, of course, I like (because anything that challenges me must ultimately be good for me, yes?). Unfortunately, I feel a bit like I did after reading the Goon Squad: that is, maybe there is nothing to find and so it's not really that the book is challenging me, but instead is simply that I am second guessing my own reaction. In other words, is the author a genius or is she a fake? I enjoyed Mr. Fox and I loved Boy, Snow, Bird so I'm tempted So, I'm still trying to digest things on this one. Which, of course, I like (because anything that challenges me must ultimately be good for me, yes?). Unfortunately, I feel a bit like I did after reading the Goon Squad: that is, maybe there is nothing to find and so it's not really that the book is challenging me, but instead is simply that I am second guessing my own reaction. In other words, is the author a genius or is she a fake? I enjoyed Mr. Fox and I loved Boy, Snow, Bird so I'm tempted to give Oyeyemi the benefit of the doubt. And yet, I just can't really bring myself to give it more than the middle-of-the-bell curve 3 star rating.

This is a ghost story; it is the story of a haunted house. The house is not haunted by ghosts, it is haunted by its own presence (which I would argue is decidedly male given its predilection for collecting female souls and its desire for control). The ghosts are the past generations of Silver women (Anna, Jennifer, Lily) and during the course of this story, Miranda. However, the purpose of these ghosts is unclear. The house itself doesn't really haunt others; it simply collects the women. The women do not harm others, they just join themselves. I guess they cause emotional harm to Luc, Elliot and Ore, but really they are not doing much.

It is a fairy tale. There are lots of references to Snow White (including the poisoned winter apples). The story also includes fairy tales (the story of the souycouant and the goodlady), as well as oblique references to Hansel and Gretal and Sleeping Beauty. It is not clearly defined, nor does it follow the pattern of a traditional fairy tale. There is no clear bad guy, there is no escape (or attempt to escape).

It really is just a collection of pretty images. And yes, Oyeyemi can write the images. However, this book is not convincingly a story. There is no plot tension or development or crisis.

I would call it a character piece except that the three narrators are Ore, Elliot, and the house ghost and none of these change. They don't develop; they don't challenge themselves or others. Miranda is the fourth main character, but of course she is always portrayed in third person (because she a compilation of Anna, Jennifer, and Lily? I was unsure why she was not granted narration status). She changes the most throughout time, but not necessarily in the course of the novel. She is a slightly brooding teenager with pica before her mother dies (and she determines it is her fault for falling asleep the night that Elliot predicted Lily's death), but otherwise she was pretty normal. After Lily's death, Miranda becomes a shadow of her former self (hah, hah, pun intended). She wastes away turning into the ghost of her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Unfortunately, she is not very sympathetic and so the reader is left not really caring.

Overall it is a worthwhile read. It is compelling, spooky at times (although not as dark as I typically like), and a quick read. Certainly recommended as a page turner, but not really sure that there is much more here. ...more

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Feb 16, 2019 Samantha rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: lesbian, favorites

White is for Witching is a deeply unsettling horror story and another masterpiece by Helen Oyeyemi. This complex novel contains so much for a fairly short book. I'm spellbound by Oyeyemi's writing. It's so out of the box. She did that.

The Silver twins, Eliot and Miranda, live at their family house in Dover, England that their mother inherited. Their father convinced her to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast. When the twins are sixteen their mother dies. This causes Miranda to have a nervous breakd ...more

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Sep 25, 2020 Tatiana rated it liked it

I DNFed it. I couldn't get into it and couldn't bring myself to care for any of the characters or anything that was happening. I'm not sure why that is. The premise sounded so interesting and fascinating, but the execution didn't really impress me. I guess this book just wasn't for me. I couldn't be bothered. ...more

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Oct 03, 2019 Obsidian rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-library-books, halloween-bingo-2019

I am seriously going to hard pass on future books by Helen Oyeyemi. I don't get them/like them and they feel like too much effort to finish. I should not struggle to understand what the author is trying to convey while reading this much. The writing is just broken sentences and thoughts. I don't even know who was who until I got to around page 30 or 40 or something like that. I stopped paying attention. I think once again that Oyeyemi was trying to play around with too many genres and none of th I am seriously going to hard pass on future books by Helen Oyeyemi. I don't get them/like them and they feel like too much effort to finish. I should not struggle to understand what the author is trying to convey while reading this much. The writing is just broken sentences and thoughts. I don't even know who was who until I got to around page 30 or 40 or something like that. I stopped paying attention. I think once again that Oyeyemi was trying to play around with too many genres and none of them worked. This book has magical realism, Gothic, and even some horror elements. Usually that would be right up my alley. However, everything was so muddled. The only good thing I can say about this book is that it is only 230 pages.

"White is for Witching" follows the Silver family. The family moves to Dover, England and turns the home into a bed and breakfast. The house though has something wrong with it that appears to be affecting women. That is pretty much what I got from reading this book. A haunted house book should be straight forward, but then again I read 77 Shadow Street a few years back and that book was a mess too.

There are a couple of characters in this story. I think that Miranda is the sister, but is often referred to as Miri by her brother whose name was Eliot. I think that the beginning rhyme we get in the beginning is the clue to the whole book, but at first I went, what?

"Miranda Silver is in Dover, in the ground beneath her mother's house.

Her throat is blocked with apple

(to stop her speaking words that may betray her)

her ears are filled with earth

(to keep her from hearing sounds that will confuse her)

her eyes are closed, but

her heart thrums hard like hummingbird wings."

So there's that and from there you have the book jump around to the narrator again telling you about their father called Luc and then how he met Lily. There are other people referenced in this story and I am too tired to go back to look them up. I just didn't get a sense of anyone at all. We know that Miranda has a condition that causes her to want to eat chalk (pica) and she seems to be going in and out of getting help. The book then has us following other women who seemed to be affected by the house the Silver family now lives in. And we honestly don't know if this is true or not (the haunted house being affected by something called a soucouyant) or is Miranda just slowly losing her mind.

I think the main problem with the writing is that it's very confusing who is speaking at any moment. At one point I thought it was an omnipotent narrator and then I realized who that was and went, oh geez. I finally gave up trying to follow who was talking though. The flow was awful from sentence to sentence honestly. I felt like I needed a diagram to follow along with what was happening at any given moment.

The setting of the book mostly seems to be focused on winter. I think Christmas is referenced at least twice and it seems around that holiday everything goes wonky. Also we have at the end the description of cold winter apples that have white on them that are then made into a pie. Yeah guys, I don't know. This book was something I would have been forced to read in high school for my English class and I would have been asked a question about symbolism.

The ending was weird and no I don't know what the shoes, the number three, etc. has to do with anything. There were apples, pie, it was winter, I was nonplussed. ...more

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Nov 30, 2010 Zen Cho rated it it was amazing

Shelves: horror, chicklit, by-poc, 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 must get tired of peo 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 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. ...more

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Oct 24, 2020 CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, queer, feminism, black, horror-halloween, reading-in-colour, british, paranormal, own

Finished my first book 4 1/2 hours in the #Readathon! Melancholy and spooky, I felt like the whole reading experience had me teetering on the edge of discomfort. The house in this book isn't so much haunted as it is as alive as the people in the story. It's a character, but a monstrous one who keeps the women in the family for itself. But it also *is* the women in the family. Floating around there's also a delightful amount of queerness and interrogation of the UK's racist and anti-immigrant/ref ...more

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Feb 14, 2013 Zen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

Helen Oyeyemi has such a way with words. This is the second book of hers that I've read — the first being Mr. Fox, which I loved — and it didn't disappoint! I'm often enchanted by books where initially disparate elements come together in brilliant, poetic, masterful ways, and White is For Witching is no doubt one of those.

Miranda Silver has gone missing, and everyone has their own take on the strange events that led to her disappearance. Who are you going to believe? The boy, Eliot, who sees the Helen Oyeyemi has such a way with words. This is the second book of hers that I've read — the first being Mr. Fox, which I loved — and it didn't disappoint! I'm often enchanted by books where initially disparate elements come together in brilliant, poetic, masterful ways, and White is For Witching is no doubt one of those.

Miranda Silver has gone missing, and everyone has their own take on the strange events that led to her disappearance. Who are you going to believe? The boy, Eliot, who sees the appeal in Poe's casual brand of horror? The girl, Ore, who senses the malevolent force of a soucouyant wherever she turns? Or the house, 29 Barton Road itself, who pulls all-season apples through its windows and adjusts its floorboards to ease Miranda's path? There are floors between the floors, just as there is more than one level to reality.

This book reads like a long riddle, or a series of riddles that each character is trying to solve in his or her own way. Perspectives change, past and present intersect, and each segment requires the reader to rely on cues embedded in the narrative to piece it all together. (i.e. When Miranda's hair is long, you know it's the past. When a first-person narrator refers to Miranda as Miri, you know it's her brother. When the omniscient, seemingly third-person narrator suddenly goes 'I' and 'my', that's the house talking. You get used to it.) It seems that one of the common criticisms of this book is that it can get confusing, but I found that once I picked up on what to look for, I didn't have any problems. Very rarely did I have to go more than a few sentences into each segment before figuring out the "who" and "when" from the context, which seems absolutely deliberate on the author's part. This book won't hold your hand, but it'll certainly glance back to make sure you're following.

What else can I say? This story is just layers upon layers of lovely writing, wherein even the simplest of details can turn out to be full of meaning if you know where to look. It's not straightforward, it's not simple, and it's not suitable for reading after dark if you're easily spooked... which I am. If you don't hear from me after tonight, please be advised: I may have been swallowed up by my house, possessed by the goodlady, or just too scared to leave the confines of my room lest someone offers me the wrong kind of apple pie. You've been warned.

As I'm writing this, there's surprisingly only one quote posted here, so I'm going to add some snippets which I think should come up at the bottom of the page? If you find that they appeal to your sensibilities as a reader, then get this book. It will wrap you up in its weirdness and witchery, and leave you wondering if your house is reading over your shoulder. (Spoiler: it probably is.) ...more

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Sep 24, 2015 Phil Sun rated it it was ok

Shelves: ghost-stories, female-protagonists, lgbtqia, british, poc-protagonists, poc-writers, novels, women-writers, child-teen-protagonists

Atmospheric and frightening at times, Oyeyemi's novel picks up momentum only in the last 50 pages or so. Underdeveloped characters and relationships leave me unsated in the end.

Edit - 3 December 2015

Warning! Spoilers ahead.

I have been thinking about this novel lately, about whiteness in general. Whiteness as a haunting, in the structure of modern Western society. The Guardian claimed, “This is a ghost story without much of a ghost, or a story. And like a spectre with no one to haunt, it seems Atmospheric and frightening at times, Oyeyemi's novel picks up momentum only in the last 50 pages or so. Underdeveloped characters and relationships leave me unsated in the end.

Edit - 3 December 2015

Warning! Spoilers ahead.

I have been thinking about this novel lately, about whiteness in general. Whiteness as a haunting, in the structure of modern Western society. The Guardian claimed, “This is a ghost story without much of a ghost, or a story. And like a spectre with no one to haunt, it seems destined to fade soundlessly away.” The reviewer points to the story’s elliptical prose and lack of suspense as part of its drawbacks. But I suspect that if you start to read the novel in terms of whiteness, then you may start to see how it works.

Pica-eating, morose Miranda lives with her distracted father and her twin Eliot in the ancestral house of her mother, recently slain in Haiti. Over time, it becomes clear that the house is haunted, and its malevolence is often directed at the new members of a multiethnic and multicultural Britain. The immigrant housekeepers are driven out by a strange and menacing presence. The Haitan housekeeper who replaces them understands that bad juju is present. Young refugee men are preyed upon and murdered by a white girl who is possibly a projection of this house, the ghost of Miranda’s recent ancestor.

The house attempts to shape Miranda to its purposes; Miranda is the heiress of its powers, to be absorbed into its structure. But Miranda tries to resist it, even as she engages in self-destructive behaviour. Against this haunting, Miranda flees to university. She loses herself in love with Ore, her university friend. Ore is one of the few black students at university. Somehow, perhaps in their strangeness or estrangement, they develop a fast, fierce bond. Their queer, interracial love is a reflection of the flexible identities of a diverse Britain, a menace to the racial purity required by white supremacy. When Miranda brings Ore to the house, the house attempts to destroy the relationship, because Ore, in her non-whiteness, threatens the continuity of that history.

I’m still not sure how to rate it, because it's two different books at once. 2 stars for a ghost story that fails. How many stars for a work that offers a horrifying representation of whiteness as a haunting? ...more

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About Helen Oyeyemi

Helen Oyeyemi

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Helen Oyeyemi is a British novelist. She lives in Prague with an ever-increasing number of teapots, and has written nine books so far.

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“Please tell a story about a girl who gets away.”
I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. “Gets away from what, though?”
“From her fairy godmother. From the happy ending that isn’t really happy at all. Please have her get out and run off the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like ‘happy’ and ‘good’ will never find her.”
“You don’t want her to be happy and good?”
“I’m not sure what’s really meant by happy and good. I would like her to be free. Now. Please begin.” — 139 likes

“I know of witches who whistle at different pitches, calling things that don't have names.” — 84 likes

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