This post is part of #ReadWomen2014.

by Cori Fulcher

I don’t really feel like Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi was written at all. I think it was told to the author a long time ago, or something she watched play out secretly. The book seems painfully real, but also from a strange, metallic alternate dimension. I want to hide the book in false dust jackets, shove it in the coats of strangers. This is the kind of book that deserves to be wrongly shelved and discovered accidently.

I think I like this book because the characters are all so very very humanly flawed. This seems very hard to do in an adaptation of Snow White, but the results are marvelous. I don’t especially like books with antagonists because they always seem a bit forced and trite. Antagonists are never fully fleshed-out and usually seem to make the protagonist seem even more noble and pure. I love meandering books about self-destruction, about selfishness, about alien worlds with all too human characters. I want nuance and grey morals and amorality.

Boy, Snow, Bird is a fascination look at shadeism, purity, and family. It follows Boy, the daughter of the Ratcatcher, who escapes her abusive parent and escapes to the woods. There, she meets Arturo Whitman and his daughter, Snow. Snow and her otherworldly beauty fascinate Boy. Soon she marries Arturo. Boy has a daughter, Bird, who exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African-Americans passing for white. Unable to deal with Snow, Boy sends her away to Boston.

I was worried narration by the “evil stepmother” would be gimmicky, but instead it was lovely. Boy is selfish and mean, but she’s also remarkably sympathetic. She was raised in an abusive household and has no idea how to parent. Snow threatens her in a sad and complex way.  Snow is everything Boy’s daughter, Bird, can’t be in 1966. Reading from Boy’s point-of-view never made me feel anything but sympathy for her and everyone around her. Even Snow is a nuanced character. Her understanding of her image and race is wonderful to watch as it evolves. It isn’t so much Snow is innately good as much as she is projected on. Snow is bitter and manipulative and flawed in so many sad and real ways.

The prose in this book is absolutely lovely. Helen Oyeyemi switches narrators and person, narrating a large bit of the beginning in 2nd person. I usually find these changes confusing and distracting from the plot, but here they work really well. Another great part of the book is the fairy tales woven throughout. They fit in seamlessly with the rest of the narrative. The fables never feel forced, but organic outpourings of the character’s feeling. They are under-your-skin familiar even when obscure. I am still in shock this book was written and didn’t just happen a long time ago to people in a sad town.