Boy, Snow, Bird

“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.” Helen Oyeyemi

Could anyone else spin magic like that with words? Helen Oyeyemi’s, ‘Boy, Snow, Bird’ is a deeply moving novel about three women and the strange connection between them. Like others, this novel is also characterized by the playful incorporation of myth, folklore and fairytale.

Set in the 1950s, Oyeyemi’s novel opens on the Lower East Side of New York City, with a young white woman named Boy Novak running away from her violent father. She soon meets a widower, a jewelry craftsman named Arturo Whitman, in Flax Hill, Mass. She marries Whitman and becomes obsessed by her new stepdaughter, Snow. All seems well until Arturo and Boy have a daughter of their own, Bird, who is born undeniably “colored.” Whitman’s family members are light-skinned African-Americans who have been passing as white, and the revelation becomes a turning point.

Oyeyemi takes commonplace clichés and makes them strange once more. Boy has been gently transforming from a beaten, motherless, neglected Cinderella to a harder, darker figure far more like Snow White’s wicked stepmother. With every chapter I read, I couldn’t help but be in absolute awe of how the fairy tale rewrites itself in startling ways.

This book certainly confirms Helen Oyeyemi’s place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of her generation. This is a no-brainer choice for your next weekend. I don’t care what the magic mirror says; Oyeyemi is the cleverest of them all.