Reading Well: Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Y’all know I love me some Helen Oyeyemi (surprisingly, Ginger Bread is the only of her novels I’ve written up here).

Her 2014 novel, Boy, Snow, Bird is, I think, among her best, mixing her evocative language, her leanings toward what might full under the umbrella of “magical realism,” and her exquisite probings of the intertwined impact of race, gender, and class on her characters into a lovely and compelling stew.

The novel focuses on Boy, and her two children, Snow (who is actually her husband’s child from a prior marriage) and Bird (so there’s the explanation of the title), tracing Boy’s escape from a painful youth and arrival into a New England life that is drastically changed by the mercurial, almost ephemeral, Snow. There are both social and inter-generational relationships to explore, and the upheaval caused by Bird’s arrival, and what Bird declares about the history of his family.

Oyeyemi’s debut novel, The Icarus Girl, may remain my favorite, but I suspect that is more because I was really in the mood for a Nigerian ghost story at the time. Boy, Snow, Bird may be her best.