From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

Boy, Snow, Bird

Helen Oyeyemi

Start date: January 6, 2015

Why we're reading this: Retelling Snow White in 1950s New England from the perspective of the wicked stepmother.
[close] Retelling Snow White in 1950s New England from the perspective of the wicked stepmother.

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Jan 11, 2016 Kate rated it liked it

There's a lot of cleverness and interesting bits in this book. It's definitely NOT a retelling of Snow White in the way that Wicked is a retelling. There are lots of fairy tale send-ups, including the image of a character unable to fit a shoe on a woman who's run away, explicit references to Cindarella and Rapunzel, etc. The general tone is like a classic fairy tale; it takes sudden dark turns, evil is both complicated and inscrutable, and the "heroine" is no conquering hero, more like someone w There's a lot of cleverness and interesting bits in this book. It's definitely NOT a retelling of Snow White in the way that Wicked is a retelling. There are lots of fairy tale send-ups, including the image of a character unable to fit a shoe on a woman who's run away, explicit references to Cindarella and Rapunzel, etc. The general tone is like a classic fairy tale; it takes sudden dark turns, evil is both complicated and inscrutable, and the "heroine" is no conquering hero, more like someone who barely makes it out alive. There are a good number of excellent lines, of varying weight. This one made me smile:

“The first coffee of the morning is never, ever, ready quickly enough. You die before it’s ready and then your ghost pours the resurrection potion out of the moka pot.”

And this one made me think over it for a long time:
“... it's not whiteness itself that sets Them against Us, but the worship of whiteness. Same goes if you swap whiteness out for other things-- fancy possessions for sure, pedigree, maybe youth too... we beat Them (and spare ourselves a lot of tedium and terror) by declining to worship.”

It lost stars for three things: 1) While Bird's narration gives another perspective, and the chance to see both the Ratcatcher and Snow outside of Boy's interactions, that section felt pretty thin - like her voice is a device more than a full-fledged character. 2) The ending was decidedly.... unsatisfying. I kept getting a sense, near the end, that I was supposed to see bigger, overarching themes or ideas coming out of the characters and action. But I didn't. What's with Bird's signing at Snow? Why is THAT the explanation for the Ratcatcher... of all possible explanations? And so on. 3) There is *so much* to the family dinner scene that's important in the discussion of race. There are so many rich veins in both the characters' realities and the issues they are trying to reconcile. And it. Just. Ends. It's over fairly quickly and the author never really picks those big ideas back up again with any depth. A loss, for sure. ...more

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Nov 02, 2014 Tiffany rated it liked it

The first chapter gets five stars. Beautiful writing. Clever allusion to Snow White without getting too close. But then, chapter two slows the plot down until it stalls, and chapter three goes off the rails. I wish Oyeyemi could have maintained the beautiful writing and clever story throughout the novel.

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Dec 23, 2017 Cari rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I wanted to love this but it never really hooked me - the narrative was disjointed and hard to follow at times, and I couldn’t get a handle on the characters. Bird’s voice, while fresh and interesting, never really seemed credible for a 13-year-old. And I totally didn’t get the ending.

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