Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

For reasons of my own I take note of the way people act when they’re around mirrors

Boy Snow Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

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If I am going to read a book based in a fairy tale, I do appreciate the light touch going on here. The elements of the story are heavy and present, but the fairy tale world created in this one are considerably small in comparison. In addition, I appreciate how the different narrative voices moved us away from the traditional telling of the story and especially gave us half the book in the voice of the “evil” stepmother. In this story, we fist meet Boy, […]

Mirrors that don’t reflect reality

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I received Boy, Snow, Bird from an earlier CBR book exchange, but it had been collecting dust for a few years. I finally had a reason to pick it back up when my Mocha Girls Read book club selected it for a fairytale’s retold theme. Helen Oyeyemi’s novel is a VERY loose version of Snow White set in the 1950s. Boy Novak runs away to a small town to escape her abusive father. She meets a man named Arturo who isn’t quite a prince, but he […]

Modern Fairytale. Race Relations. Intriguing premise, flat execution.

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Ohhhhh boy.  This book.  This was the last pick of the local library book club of the year, and it was much anticipated.  It has received much acclaim, NPR said great things about it, and but for me, and my book club, it widely missed the mark.  It was NOT loved.  Or liked even.  At this club we (about 16 folks) go around the room and give a score to a scale of 5 and this one didn’t even get past three.  And there were a […]

“When something catches your attention just keep your attention on it, stick with it ’til the end, and somewhere along the line there’ll be weirdness.”

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It would be reductive to sum this book up as ‘Snow White in the ’60s with racism,’ but you could if you really wanted to. That’s the hook that caught me, after all. But really, the Snow White story is just the way in. It’s not really concerned with the same things that Snow White (or other fairy-tales) is concerned with. Boy, Snow, Bird is not as mysterious of a title as it first appears. Boy, Snow and Bird are all characters in the novel. […]

“I’ll Get You, My Pretty!” ~ Boy, Snow, Bird

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This highly acclaimed new novel by Helen Oyeyemi has been called a modern retake on the fairy tale of Snow White. In fact, it is a fairy tale that deals with tropes common to many fairy tales: wicked stepmothers, abandonment, evil forces that prey on innocent young girls, curses. But the overriding theme is female beauty, particularly society’s predilection for whiteness. We imagine beauty as powerful and empowering to those who possess it, but it frequently engenders fear and malevolence in others, resulting in endangerment […]



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