3.0
White is for Witching
ByPublisher Description
Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award
One of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists
From the acclaimed author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Gingerbread, and Peaces
There’s something strange about the Silver family house in the closed-off town of Dover, England. Grand and cavernous with hidden passages and buried secrets, it’s been home to four generations of Silver women—Anna, Jennifer, Lily, and now Miranda, who has lived in the house with her twin brother, Eliot, ever since their father converted it to a bed-and-breakfast.
The Silver women have always had a strong connection, a pull over one another that reaches across time and space, and when Lily, Miranda’s mother, passes away suddenly while on a trip abroad, Miranda begins suffering strange ailments. An eating disorder starves her. She begins hearing voices. When she brings a friend home, Dover’s hostility toward outsiders physically manifests within the four walls of the Silver house, and the lives of everyone inside are irrevocably changed.
At once an unforgettable mystery and a meditation on race, nationality, and family legacies, White is for Witching is a boldly original, terrifying, and elegant novel by a prodigious talent.
One of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists
From the acclaimed author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Gingerbread, and Peaces
There’s something strange about the Silver family house in the closed-off town of Dover, England. Grand and cavernous with hidden passages and buried secrets, it’s been home to four generations of Silver women—Anna, Jennifer, Lily, and now Miranda, who has lived in the house with her twin brother, Eliot, ever since their father converted it to a bed-and-breakfast.
The Silver women have always had a strong connection, a pull over one another that reaches across time and space, and when Lily, Miranda’s mother, passes away suddenly while on a trip abroad, Miranda begins suffering strange ailments. An eating disorder starves her. She begins hearing voices. When she brings a friend home, Dover’s hostility toward outsiders physically manifests within the four walls of the Silver house, and the lives of everyone inside are irrevocably changed.
At once an unforgettable mystery and a meditation on race, nationality, and family legacies, White is for Witching is a boldly original, terrifying, and elegant novel by a prodigious talent.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesWhite is for Witching Reviews
3.0
“i don't know how to talk about the racist house without it sounding completely unserious, but the calcified spirit of a british woman from the 1940s whose husband died fighting the germans in africa is such a perfect representation of british nationalism. an entire life built on these false narratives and when they're snatched from her of course she goes crazy. the different women of the house are fascinating microcosms of different eras of british womanhood. first the stern, devoted, brittle patriot; then the nihilistic, beauty-focused, sexually liberated 60s child; then the jet-setting humanitarian. each woman must live with the accumulated weight of the previous generations bearing down on her. by the time miri's born, it's too much. and the house, or racist british nativism, has become completely unable to cope with reality. dover's not white anymore, maybe never has been, and even french father luc is too foreign for the house's taste. meanwhile the house allows elliot's incestuous love for his sister, encourages it, even. nativism can only shrink and crack and draw in on itself, until the only thing left is a boy in love with his sister, and all it can think is "better him than someone black." miri eating away at the chalk is something - growing up with the spirit of a house obsessed with whiteness and with the white cliffs of dover and fighting it in her own way, eating dover, one bite of chalk at a time.”
“really hard to rate/review this one. was quite confusing, slightly unnerving. i really like how the author writes but some parts i didn’t understand. i enjoyed it but also was waiting for more.”
About Helen Oyeyemi
Helen Oyeyemi is the author of five novels, most recently White Is for Witching, which won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award, Mr. Fox, which won a 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and Boy, Snow, Bird. In 2013, she was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. She lives in Prague.
Other books by Helen Oyeyemi
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