A review by sam_bizar_wilcox
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

5.0

This novel is arresting. With shades of Toni Morrison and Shirley Jackson (and perhaps Donna Tartt), Oyeyemi's haunted-house fairytale is a verbal feast -- enough to choke on. A young woman is haunted by the ghostly women of her family in an old seaside bed-and-breakfast, the house itself serving as the primary antagonist (and one of the untrustworthy narrators) of this eerie fable. Of Oyeyemi's novels (at least, of those that I've read) this is the most complete: the novel is structurally sound and the ending feels contained in the beginning. I've long held the belief that Oyeyemi is more alluring for the strengths of her prose than for the actual novel-length stories, and that her best works are in shorter forms. This novel has proven me wrong. In fact, I think it's the most aesthetically complete and rich offering from her oeuvre. It's a near-perfect novel. And with some very savvy language and some complex verbal structures, I think it's a far more cerebral work than it gets credit for. An excellent choice for late October.