Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
You know the blinking white guy gif? That was me for like the entirety of this book. I still have no idea what the hell it was about or what happened to why. This one needs a deep read, not a piece-by-piece metro read but I gave it what I had and I am still so lost. Can someone smarter than me tell me what I just read? Gingerbread is part Hansel and Gretel, part bedtime story, and part fever dream. There’s the start of […]
Boy Snow Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
I’m supposed to like this book. I like things that are a bit bizarre. I like England (where it is set). And everyone seems to rave about both this author and this book. So I’ve clearly – once again – missed something. And yet… I should have known. The blurb on the front, from The Boston Globe, is “Profoundly chilling…a slow-building neo-Gothic that will leave persevering readers breathless.” Did you catch that? “persevering readers.” Apparently I was in for a bit of a slog. A book that […]
This collection of short stories by Helen Oyeyemi is a mix of fairy tale and the modern world, of the fanciful and the dark, with a generous portion of sexuality thrown in. In some ways, it reminds me of Angela Carter’s work, but Oyeyemi’s stories, while dealing with heavy themes such as betrayal, abandonment and disappointment, maintain a lightness. Her characters demonstrate a quality that’s not exactly optimism, but a willingness to carry on, a good natured fatalism that tempers the darkness. The nine stories […]
