{"id":4162,"date":"2015-03-18T07:39:19","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T11:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4162"},"modified":"2015-03-18T07:39:19","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T11:39:19","slug":"boy-snow-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=4162","title":{"rendered":"** Boy, Snow, Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"mirror,

(painting: “Image” by Lou Hedge)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Helen Oyeyemi<\/a>\u2014It\u2019s hard to know what to say about this much-praised novel. It has many elements: two narrators, a passel of symbols drawn from fairy tales (mirrors, rats, evil stepmothers\u2014and mothers), various themes, an epistolary section. Yet, somehow, the book doesn\u2019t cohere into a whole. It\u2019s as if we had all the ingredients, but didn\u2019t end up with the cake.<\/p>\n

Many key characters are pretending to be something they are not, so that all the readers assumptions must periodically be reexamined, as Truths emerge. They defend their choices to build a life on lies, and lies\u2014or thoughts about them\u2014are another theme. Boy (who is a girl) is talking about her boyfriend Charlie here: \u201cFor my part I was always a little disturbed by him because I\u2019d never heard him tell a lie. That was horrifying to me, like living in a house with every door and window wide open all day long.\u201d<\/p>\n

For my part too few of those doors and windows were open in this novel, which kept me from understanding key aspects of the characters\u2019 relationships. While a novel that explains everything is pretty boring, this one tipped the balance too far in the other direction. New York Times<\/em> reviewer Porochista Khakpour<\/a> called the novel \u201cgloriously unsettling\u201d and Oyeyemi \u201ca writer of rather enchanting horror stories.\u201d Certainly, horrifying circumstances led the characters to adopt their various pretenses, and while their assumption of false identities may have made a kind of sense in the 1930s and 1940s when they made that choice, what is the continuing relevance to the 21st century reader? Or is there any?<\/p>\n

A friend recently remarked that a novel should not be analyzed to death, that the point of it isn\u2019t to dissect, but to enjoy it on a visceral, emotional level. I can think of novels that aren\u2019t fully clear (any of Flannery O\u2019Connor\u2019s writing, for example) that are emotionally powerful. For me, this one never quite connected.
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