Boy, Snow, Bird - Helen Oyeyemi

One of the nice things about doing Shiny New Books is that I feel I have more of a grasp on what's happening in publishing at the moment - as you doubtless know by now, modern novels are seldom my go-to.  Having said that, there is a tiny handful of living authors whose careers I follow and whose books I await - and one of those is Helen Oyeyemi (even with a couple of her books unread on my shelf).  Well - and you've guessed this by now - I reviewed her latest, Boy, Snow, Bird, for Shiny New Books, and flipping good it was too.  You can read my review here, and (exciting!) the Q&A I did with Helen Oyeyemi too.

White is for Witching

You may remember that I was feeling all smug and public-service-using the other day, when I got White is for Witching out of the public library - my first public library book for about six years, I'd imagine. I *had* asked for it from Picador, but not heard from them for a few weeks, so off to the library I went... and, when I was halfway through the book, guess what came through the postbox? Thank you, Picador, I now own my very own copy. Sorry, library. But I did go and get another one out - Identity by Milan Kundera. Having decided not to read another Kundera for a while, I realised I was missing his writing, and that he'd written something nice and short...

Anyway. I was very impressed by The Icarus Girl - my first encounter with Helen Oyeyemi - back in August 2008. I was also a little sickened that she wrote it during her A Levels, got another novel out during her time studying at Cambridge, and now seems unstoppable. And then I read Eva's lovely review of White is for Witching, which (a) was very enthusiastic, and (b) mentioned Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle as a point of comparison. Yes, the very same novel which is in my 50 Books You Must Read list. I couldn't not read it, could I?

The novel follows Miranda, from her sixth-form to Cambridge - she has a twin brother [twinlit - check], has pica and thus eats chalk [quirky and original - check], and seems to be in tune with her dead ancestors and her very human house [weird houses - check]. All very Gothic and haunting. I'd love to explain more about the plot, and the characters, but I don't think I can... despite all those 'checks', I was disappointed by White is for Witching. Mostly because I hadn't got a clue what was going on.

I was a bit confused by the ending of The Icarus Girl, but I liked the ambiguity - the climax of Jessamy battling her double - but this seemed to seep through all of White is for Witching. Was this just me? Was it just because I was reading it while a bit tired, and later when I had a headache? Or did the novel give me a headache?

There are various narrators - Eliot, Miranda's twin brother; Ore, her friend and sometime-lover at Cambridge; a third-person narrator; the house; maybe her dead mother? But they were never announced. I was usually halfway through a narrative chunk before I'd identified the person who was speaking. It didn't help that I thought Eliot was a girl and Ore was a boy, when in fact it's the other way round. What I did like was that narratives would blur into each other, connected over a word that they both use, for example:

'I can only explain it in comparison to something mundane - my adjustment to Lily's ghost was sort of like when you're insanely thirsty, but for some reason you can't get the cap on your water bottle to open properly so you tussle at it with your teeth and hands until you can get a trickle of water to come through. A little water at a time, and you're trying to be less thirsty and more patient so that the water can be enough. The thing with having seen Lilly was just like that, a practical inner adjustment to meet a need. At least she is there, I'd thought, even if she is just a ghost and doesn't speak, at least she is

there

was a bird on the windowsill later in the afternoon. I looked up from Thus Spake Zarathustra and saw it sitting motionless. [etc.]'

But there was a little too much structural experiment for my liking - I love experimental writing, but doing it with the way words are laid out on the page always seems, somehow, like the laziest method.

And there are all sorts of unexplained things - or, at least, things I didn't find explained. The novel opens with Miranda disappearing completely, and tracks back to find out why - which is deliberately not resolved. But what was the bizarre stabbing incident? Why does she not look like her old photographs? Why does she think she is dead? What was that bit about someone being kept in a walk-in closet for years? SO CONFUSED HEAD EXPLODING EYES POPPING OUT OF MY HEAD. Ahem.

I haven't read Oyeyemi's second novel yet, The Opposite House, but I'd be interested to see the progression. For me, White is for Witching took all the elements I really liked in The Icarus Girl, and then went too far with them.

I really wanted to like this novel, and so I'm waiting to be convinced... did I just read it in the wrong frame of mind? Or has Oyeyemi got too experimental for her boots?

Flying Too Close To The Sun

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi has been on the peripherals of my mind since someone mentioned it here - in fact, taking a quick trip down blogmory lane, I find it was Nichola aka Lost In Translation, back when I was talking about The Love Child by Edith Olivier, in my 50 Books... but that was only January, and I'm sure I'd heard of it before that. No matter. When Stephanie at Bloomsbury asked what sort of books I'd like her to send me, The Icarus Girl instantly came to mind.

Jessamy Harrison is an introverted, thoughtful and fanciful child, eight years old, with a fiery Nigerian mother and a softly spoken, slightly anxious, white English father. When she visits her mother's family in Nigeria (Jessamy et al live in England) she also meets Titiola, or TillyTilly, a ragged girl of her own age who seems to be living secretly in the compound. TillyTilly's friendship means a lot to Jessamy - but then TillyTilly also appears back in England, and grows more and more possessive in their friendship. What seemed to be an exciting but innocent friendship soon becomes a dangerous and terrifying one - both for Jessamy and for the reader.

I don't think any review of this book has been written without expressing astonishment that Oyeyemi wrote The Icarus Girl whilst she was studying for her A Levels. It is pretty darn amazing, but this book would be extremely impressive whoever had written it. I love narratives which introduce an element of fantasy into an otherwise domestic setting - it's what I hope to write a dissertation and possibly doctorate on - but Oyeyemi goes a step further than that, because the reader is constantly left uncertain. How much is real, how much is illness, how much is delusion? Jessamy is seeing a psychiatrist, but her sessions deliberately do not reveal much to the reader.

What starts as a novel about loneliness and isolation becomes infused with issues of obsession, possession, power and, most sophisticatedly, doubleness. I know 'duplicity' is probably the correct term, but doubleness is more to the point - even from TillyTilly's first appearance (and her name!) when she simply repeats everything Jessamy says. It seems a little like those pieces of voice-activated-typing software, where they have to listen to your voice for a while, to register and recognise it, before the programme will work. Doubleness and identity become increasingly important through the novel, very cleverly.

Now, I like novels which don't tell you everything - ambiguity is fine. My Cousin Rachel is an example from my recent reading. But I finished The Icarus Girl without a clue as to what was real, what the almost hallucinatory final chapter signified - but I also felt that the fault was mine. Someone who's read it - is it clear? Should I have been able to work things out? It doesn't alter my opinion of the novel, though - it is exceptional, and I look forward to reading more of Oyeyemi's work.


In less happy news, for those of you who've read this far, the Arts & Humanities Research Council decided not to give me any money for my Masters next year... the next step is college funding, and the step after that is bankruptcy! But I'm determined to do the course, and will keep praying.