May 20, 2014

Review--Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A girl named Boy, a girl named Snow and a girl named Bird.  Three unique names for three unique individuals.  It's 1953 and Boy is living in New York, the daughter of a rat catcher.  She has never known her mother.  Boy "was a girl with a white-blonde pigtail hanging down over one shoulder..." When life with her father got to be too much, she packed her stuff and moved to the farthest place she could get on the bus, Flax Hill, CT.

Quickly, Boy made friends and met a man, Arturo Whitman.  Arturo has a daughter named Snow, who the whole town adored.  Shortly after Arturo and Boy are married, she becomes pregnant.  When she gives birth to her daughter, Bird, the Whitman family secrets soon come to light.

There is an underlying theme in this book with mirrors.  The women claim that they do not "see" themselves in them.  Is it because they are ghosts? Or is it that their family secrets run so deep that they find it hard to see themselves as they really are?

This book reminded me of books I had to read for school.  I enjoyed the storyline as a whole, but reading it, I felt as though there were questions I was supposed to be searching the answers for instead of just enjoying the book.  There are so many secrets throughout the entire book with the biggest secret coming at the end.  Told in three sections by Boy, Bird, and then Boy again, this is very interesting story about race in the north in the 50's and 60's.



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