21st Century Literature discussion

Here's for posting general information, reviews, first impressions, etc. I'd say no spoilers, but I'm not sure it's possible to spoil this book. (Actually, I'll make that a challenge - please post, with a spoiler tag, a statement that you think would qualify.) Rather than divide the book up into chapters, I'll open a second topic for discussing the entire book.

Following are a few reviews, with a choice quote from some of them. Please feel free to agree with or criticize the critics, here or in the "Entire Book" thread.

From The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
This reviewer thought it lacked suspense, and didn't like the reverse structure, starting with Miri's stay in the psychiatric hospital. "Surely this breaks one of the first rules of storytelling: things have to get worse before they get better. Has the house worked its mischief before we even came in? "

From The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/bo...
"Oyeyemi’s story is suffering ever so slightly under the weight of a political agenda."

This one is from a Conceptual Fiction, blog, "My Year of Horrible Reading
http://www.conceptualfiction.com/whit...
"Some have compared Helen Oyeyemi to Henry James, and
at first glance this seems a strange connection. White is for
Witching is an unconventional novel, less a structured story
than an extended mood piece, a rumination on horror as
personified in a disintegrating personality."

Finally, an interview with Oyeyemi in Fiction Writers Review
Reinventing the Haunted House: An Interview with Helen Oyeyemi where Oyeyemi makes it clear that, yes, the house is racist.

Thanks Whitney. Not sure if I'll get round to this one yet.

I grabbed this on remainder after reading and very much liking some of her more recent books in the past couple of years, so if I can get to it, I'll join in. I've grabbed my copy, so I'm ready.

For any number of reasons, I have not been able to join the discussions in a few months, but I have the book and will start this week. Looking forward to the discussion.

Great, looking forward to seeing you join in! It's lonely in this big old house.

Has anyone started reading yet. I am almost through, and there is something about her language but for me it was hard to keep on reading for the first third. The change of perspectives was rather confusing. Did someone had similar problems?

Kristina wrote: "Has anyone started reading yet. I am almost through, and there is something about her language but for me it was hard to keep on reading for the first third. The change of perspectives was rather c..."

Yes. The first few pages especially don't make much sense until you've gotten to the end; but they do list the different narrators so are helpful in that manner.

I am not finding a problem with the language but do feel a bit removed from the characters so far.

Hee hee, I'm currently reading Black Swan Green and just getting started on The Sound and the Fury, so unclear narrators are no problem! I'm appreciating Miri's "voice," alternately comforted by and horrified at her actions.

Kay wrote: "I am not finding a problem with the language but do feel a bit removed from the characters so far."

Kay, what is that makes you feel removed from the characters?

Whitney wrote: "Kay wrote: "I am not finding a problem with the language but do feel a bit removed from the characters so far."

Kay, what is that makes you feel removed from the characters?"

I think it is the magical realism aspect of this novel. I want to sympathize with the experiences and suffering of the characters but I find I am not and just reading along. The ability to relate to the characters, in the way that I understand what they go through, not necessarily like them, is what makes a 5-star book for me. I am not finding this here so far. And I did find it in The Icarus Girl, so it is not the author per se.

Kay wrote: "I want to sympathize with the experiences and suffering of the characters but I find I am not and just reading along. The ability to relate to the characters, in the way that I understand what they go through..."

I found the Silver's distant as well, in the way of eccentric families that seem to live in a world with slightly different rules (which turns out to be true, in this case). I think Luc frequently felt some distance from their world as well. There's a scene where Elliot and Miri are wrenching at Lily's hair, and the house will not let Luc interfere. Afterwards he reenters more noisily and we see the fiction of a normal family, except for the ominous narration by the house;

' “Hello!” he called, before he even reached the sitting room this time.
“Hello!” they all called back.
Good mother, good father, good children, all watched over by me.'