Boy, Snow, Bird

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / General / Oyeyemi, Helen
On Shelf At: Pittsfield Branch, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Oyeyemi, Helen	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / General / Oyeyemi, Helen	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"From the prizewinning author of Mr. Fox, the Snow White fairy tale brilliantly recast as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity. In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty-the opposite of the life she's left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she'd become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy's daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time. "-- Provided by publisher.
"A reimagining of the Snow White story set in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

This book will enchant you submitted by LibraryMaven on June 15, 2014, 3:20pm Like the very best of fairy tales, Boy Snow Bird pulls the reader into its 1950s Massachusetts world slowly. It is not until the reader is invested in the characters that Oyeyemi starts asking the hard questions: what is race, what is family, what is 'fair treatment', how much does appearance matter and does it tell the truth? Part magical realism, part historical fiction, the sum of Boy Snow Bird is greater than either genre and weaves a web that leaves the reader thinking about it long after the last page is turned.

Ethereal submitted by ark on June 25, 2014, 7:57am Oyeyemi's writing is superlative. This is the first novel of her's that I've read, and I was perplexed, enchanted, and hooked from the start. I checked it out, and, having forgotten what it was about, began reading without any context, didn't read the jacket flaps or blurbs; nothing. The bones of the Snow White fairy tale come up slowly, then faster and faster. Oyeyemi writes from the perspectives of two of the main characters. It's written in three parts, with a time jump in between that really changes the narrative; it sets the story on a fast track toward the family having to confront their past and what they've done to each other. I loved this.

loll submitted by twang1223 on August 7, 2019, 5:26pm lololol

Nice boy submitted by smr on July 1, 2020, 4:25pm Nice boys bird

B S b submitted by Anthany on July 10, 2020, 9:39am Boy snow bird