Boy, Snow, Bird

Helen Oyeyemi

Mar 2014 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Carra Patterson and Susan Bennett

About this audiobook

From the prizewinning author of Mr. Fox , the Snow White fairy tale brilliantly recast as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity. In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty-- the opposite of the life she' s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she' d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy' s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving , Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.

About the author

Helen Oyeyemi was born on December 10, 1984 in Nigeria. She attended Corpus Christie College and later graduated form Cambridge University in 2006. She has authored seven books including: Boy, Snow, Bird, What is Not Yours in Not Yours, Mr. Fox and The Icarus Girl. She won the PEN/Open Book Award in 2017 for "What is Not Yours is Not Yours".