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WoGF Review: White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
Kristine N. (krizzaro) is a climate scientist and mom to two children. She’s been reading SF and fantasy as long as she can remember and hopes to instill the same love for fine literature in her impressionable offspring. While omnivorous in her reading, she has a particular fondness for dystopia, epic fantasy, and anything written by Connie Willis, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Neal Stephenson. Kristine blogs about reading at writing on her site Library Creature.
WARNING: There is a SPOILER after the fold. If you have not read this book and don’t want a plot point revealed, do not read beyond the second paragraph.
I am not into literary novels. For that reason alone, I probably should have avoided this book. White is for Witching is a very literary read, which translates into beautifully written but meandering, lacking in plot, and full of characters who aren’t necessarily interesting or sympathetic. In fact, the most sympathetic characters are the minor characters.
The story (such as it is) follows Miri and her twin brother, Elliot, who are mourning after the death of their mother, Lily. Miri, who had pica to begin with, totally loses it after her mother’s death and basically starves herself stupid. Very stupid. Not stupid enough to keep her out of Cambridge (?!?!), but stupid nonetheless. I suppose the book could be seen as the chronicle of a mentally unbalanced woman killing herself through starvation and dragging loved ones down with her. It’s not a very pleasant arc, and the inciting incident isn’t quite satisfactory, but again, it’s literary fiction. Things don’t apparently have to make sense here. They often don’t.
