Helen Oyeyemi

      Helen Oyeyemi is a Nigerian who grew up in Lewisham, England, but seems to have spent time in a number of places: she is now living in Prague. She must have lived for an appreciable period in the United States (or done a mass of research), as this novel "Boy, Snow, Bird" is set on the East Coast, and much of the action takes place during the 'fifties and 'sixties.

     Like many books I have read recently, I am in awe of the talent and imagination of the author, but I often feel that he or she is indulging that talent at the expense of the form and shape of the novel,  and a good editor might have been successful in imposing better form and shape, and probably in the process could advantageously have cut down the length.  But...perhaps, this is just my own predilection. 

      "Boy" is not a boy but a blonde woman of Polish extraction who grows up with no mother and is raised by a father who is a rat catcher, treats her brutally, and from whom at about the age of twenty she runs away and makes her way, more or less at random, to a small New England town called Flax Hill. "Boy" who is not a boy sets a theme that runs through the story...people are not what they seem, and much mysterious play is made of characters who cannot see themselves in mirrors. Boy meets Arturo Whitman, whose wife Julia had died some years before, shortly after having given birth to a baby girl, who was named Snow. Boy marries Whitman and she has a baby who gets named Bird, whose appearance fits in with the central theme of the story, and a good slice of the novel is a first person narrative by Bird. There are also  extensive exchanges of long letters between Bird and Snow, who for unexplained reasons is sent to live with her aunt and uncle shortly after Bird is born. 

     The Whitman family has been "passing" as white, although their ancestry is African American, and there is a great deal of focus on this aspect of their lives, and the ways in which they deal with it. Again--we have the theme of people not necessarily being what they seem to be, and eventually we are presented with what is perhaps the biggest twist that emphasizes this aspect of life.

         Reviewers have emphasized the 'fairy tale' aspect of much of Oyeyemi's writing, and there is an air of unreality that characterizes much of this novel. To quote from a very detailed and glowing review in the Guardian, improved by my punctuation: "In her manipulation of a succession of overlapping triangles, of which the book's title is only one, Oyeyemi suggests the possibility of a kind of redemption; that identities eventually settle, configure, cohere, and that we all learn to live with the life we have fashioned for ourselves. In an intriguing, sinuously attractive book full of jeu d'esprit and lightning skies that often part to reveal pain and turmoil, it is a welcome hint of stability and optimism, if not one that we should trust in entirely."  

     I enjoyed it, though occasionally a degree of tedium set in, and the writing is certainly extraordinary.