Friday, January 3, 2014

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeymi


I'm apparently on a English-language Nigerian author kick. Helen Oyeyemi is amazing. This book is a loose retelling of the Snow White fairy tale set in the 1950s with race at the forefront of the story. I'd classify it as magical realism. The plot floats around, as Oyeyemi likes to do, but overall the story was much more straight forward than Mr. Fox. I left Mr. Fox with a desperate longing for it to continue. Boy, Snow, Bird was much more hard hitting. I felt ok walking away from it when it was done. The writing was expertly done but I didn't feel better for having read it.

4.5/5