Boy, Snow, Bird

An unusual audiobook deserves distinctive performers, and this one deserves a blue ribbon for its fascinating efforts on both fronts. After a striking opener involving a rat catcher and a daring escape, Susan Bennett, as Boy, the first narrator, grabs the listener and never lets go, for better or worse. Bennett's tone has a paradoxically vulnerable edge that suits the character. Later, Boy's daughter, Bird, takes over the story, and narrator Carra Patterson has her turn to shine. Both performers create vibrant, memorable voices for their characters as the twists of the story wind beguilingly into one's ears, demanding one's full attention. The story itself has strengths and weakness, but the audiobook is certainly worth a listen. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Starred review from January 6, 2014
The latest novel from Oyeyemi (Mr. Fox) is about a woman named Boy; her stepdaughter, Snow; and her daughter, Bird. Set in the 1950s Massachusetts, the novel is a retelling of the Snow White tale that plays on the concept of “fairest of them all,” complete with mirrors as a recurring motif. The story begins with Boy’s headlong escape from her abusive father in New York City. She washes up in a small New England town where she meets Arturo Whitman, a widower who becomes her husband. When their daughter, Bird, is born, she is noticeably “colored,” though her half-sister, Snow (Arturo’s daughter), appears not to be. Boy, who is white, discovers that her husband’s family are African-Americans passing as white. Snow is sent away to be raised by an aunt, and the book’s middle section is narrated by Bird, who is as whip smart, wry, and irresistible as Boy. Oyeyemi wields her words with economy and grace, and she rounds out her story with an inventive plot and memorable characters.

September 15, 2014

Things are not what they seem in this unusual retelling of the story of Snow White. The protagonist, Boy Novak, is a girl, and a beautiful one at that. Her father, Frank, is a professional rat catcher in New York. In 1953, tired of Frank's mistrust and physical abuse, 20-year-old Boy takes a bus to the end of the line, which turns out to be Flax Hill, a manufacturing town in eastern Massachusetts. She catches the eye and the heart of Arturo Whitman, a widower with a young daughter, Snow. When Boy and Arturo's daughter, Bird, is born, a family secret is revealed. Bird's dark skin is evidence that the Whitmans are light-skinned blacks who have been passing for white. Though Boy never imagined that she'd become a wicked stepmother, she sends Snow to be raised by her mother's sister in the city. Folk tales often have inconclusive endings, and Oyeyemi's version is just that. The audiobook features two narrators, Susan Bennett and Carra Patterson, to good effect. VERDICT For large collections of contemporary fiction. ["Oyeyemi, who has an eye for odd details, casts a spell with words and crafts a dreamlike world out of ordinary characters and circumstances in this intelligent and bewitching novel," read the review of the Riverhead hc, LJ 2/15/14.]--Nann Blaine Hilyard, formerly with Zion-Benton P.L., IL

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