By Esther Callens
Award winning novelist Helen Oyeyemi has yet scripted another fascinating novel. Soon to be released (March 6, to be exact) is Boy, Snow, Bird – Oyeyemi’s latest. A most intriguing tale incorporating race, beauty and envy – Boy, Snow, Bird gives a remarkable twist to the fabled Snow White. It is extraordinary!
It is in the winter during the 1950s when Boy Novak runs away from her New York home. She has left behind her father and his despicable ways in search of a better life. Boy winds up in a small Massachusetts town. It is here she meets and marries Arturo Whitman and becomes stepmother to his beautiful daughter, Snow. All is assumed well until – along came Bird.
Boy and Arturo eventually have a daughter and names her Bird. Peculiarities surface upon Bird’s birth as her lineage is of African descent – a race that is not evident in her parents’ ancestry. Arturo reveals that the Whitmans have been passing as Caucasians. Under these circumstances, Boy finds that being a stepmother is an arduous task and the dynamics between her and Snow change drastically. Years later, Bird’s curiosity is piqued and more family secrets are exposed, forcing the family to see things clearer.
It is fitting that CNN, Huffington Post, New York Magazine, Flavorwire and The Millions have named Boy, Snow, Bird a most anticipated book of this year. Helen Oyeyemi has a unique brilliancy when it comes to assimilating the world of the enchanted into the modern society of today. As with her previous reads, it is masterfully executed making the final results an unforgettable great novel.
Helen Oyeyemi is a young British novelist/playwright. She was born in Nigeria in 1984. She is a 2006 graduate of Cambridge University where she studied political and social science. She has written two plays and five novels of which her title White is for Witching won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award. She is one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists.
