About this item
In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life she's left behind in New York. She marries Arturo Whitman, a local widower, and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow.
A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she'd become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy's daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African-Americans passing for white. And even as Boy, Snow, and Bird are divided, their estrangement is complicated by an insistent curiosity about one another. In seeking an understanding that is separate from the image each presents to the world, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold.
Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.
About the Author
Helen Oyeyemi is a British novelist. She lives in Prague with an ever-increasing perfume wardrobe- let's just say the bottle count exceeds 150 but is less than 300- and has written ten books so far, none of which contain 'magical realism'. (Can't fiction sometimes get extra fictional without being called such names?!) Number One Daydream these days: writing a novel or story that inspires a fragrance.
