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Cover of Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel

Boy, Snow, Bird: A Novel

by Helen Oyeyemi

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As seen on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, where it was described as “gloriously unsettling… evoking Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Angela Carter, Edgar Allan Poe, Gabriel García Márquez, Chris Abani and even Emily Dickinson,” and already one of the year’s most widely acclaimed novels: “Helen Oyeyemi has fully transformed from a literary prodigy into a powerful, distinctive storyteller…Transfixing and surprising.”—Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A) “I don’t care what the magic mirror says; Oyeyemi is the cleverest in the land…daring and unnerving… Under Oyeyemi’s spell, the fairy-tale conceit makes a brilliant setting in which to explore the alchemy of racism, the weird ways in which identity can be transmuted in an instant — from beauty to beast or vice versa.” – Ron Charles, T…

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"Fairy tales get reworked and re-imagined all the time, but the treatment Snow White gets in Helen Oyeyemi’s novel Boy, Snow, Bird is more like a deconstruction of the tale than a mere retelling. Boy is a white woman who realizes her husband is an African-American who has been passing for white only after she gives birth to a black child, Bird. “Passing” in this way is a truly magical ability, but it comes at a price. To explain would mean spoilers, and there are some fantastic yet plausible revelations in this story you’ll want to discover on your own."
NPR Books We Love — 2014 · apps.npr.org