Boy, Snow, Bird

One of Granta's Best Young British Novelists, Oyeyemi (Mr. Fox; White Is for Witching) delivers an ingenious retelling of the Snow White fairy tale, full of the author's distinctive magical charm. Boy Novak, a young woman searching for the beauty missing in her life, leaves New York and arrives by chance in Flax Hill, MA, during the winter of 1953. She struggles to forget the ugliness of her past but creates a new life, marries a local widower, and becomes stepmother to his affable daughter, Snow Whitman. But the birth of her own daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans' family secret—they are light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Boy never dreamt of becoming a wicked stepmother, but hints of the tale's aesthetic obsession begin to emerge as Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the cruelty of the mirror and question how much power appearances truly hold.