With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time. Oyeyemi also cited the Nella Larsen novel Passing as an inspiration. We are constantly exposed to books from different genres and themes and this month's theme was a fairy tale retold, and in this case, Snow White. Boy, Snow, Bird is a beautiful book about ugly things, ultimately—like the decidedly unwonderful ways prejudices can express themselves—and though racial discrimination is … Identity takes many complicated, nuanced forms throughout the novel. The Nigerian-born British writer’s new book, Boy, Snow, Bird, offers a twist on Snow White – with shades of Cinderella as well — but don’t expect Disney, or anything hewing as closely to the original as Donald Barthelme’s postmodern Snow White, … Most obviously, this is a novel about racial passing. Boy, Snow, Bird is an enchanting retelling of Snow White that mixes questions of beauty and vanity with issues of race.” —Cosmopolitan “[Oyeyemi] is the literary heir of the late, great Angela Carter, a writer whose fiction glides from swirling archetype and folklore to the wised-up observations of a thoroughly modern womanhood.” In fact, Oyeyemi complicates the themes she establishes. The novel was named as one of the best books of 2014 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and BuzzFeed. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. Boy, Snow, Bird August 7, 2017 August 7, 2017 Daniel B. Oyeyemi, Helen This was an unplanned read after Emancipation Day , which has a similar theme, people who fear their racial identity. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. Passing as Construction of Identity. I'm not sure that I would have personally chosen this book to read but it's a great example of why I joined a book club in the first place. Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi – eBook Details. Boy Snow Bird has all the matter-of-fact strangeness of her past books, but it feels more carefully assembled than some of her earlier work. Boy, Snow, Bird is largely the story of the Wicked Queen in Snow White, though in Oyeyemi's version her wickedness is ambiguous and subject to debate. Boy Snow Bird Themes. Boy, Snow, Bird is a retelling of Snow White, and the wit and lyricism of Helen Oyeyemi's prose shares the qualities of a fable. But this novel isn't content to conclude with an easy moral. (“Boy, Snow, Bird” is less sentimental than Eowyn Ivey’s “The Snow Child,” a more faithful fairy-tale reimagining that was a finalist for last year’s Pulitzer Prize in fiction.) Going back through for quotations from it, I keep finding great little bits of foreshadowing and parallel imagery that I … In fact, the oddly named Boy Novak, described from her own perspective as "an icy blonde," is a sympathetic narrator almost from the start, from the moment her abuse at the hands of her father becomes apparent. Boy, Snow, Bird is a 2014 novel by British author Helen Oyeyemi.The novel, Oyeyemi's fifth, was a loose retelling of the fairytale Snow White. In her latest book, Boy, Snow, Bird, three women with strange names reenact the Snow White myth in 1950s New England. "Boy, Snow, Bird" was my book club's choice of the month. Boy, a runaway from New York City, marries Arturo, and they have a child Bird.