Ms. Hen reviews White is for Witching

White is for Witching

Helen Oyeyemi

Riverhead Books

2009

Ms. Hen didn’t realize it was Halloween season until much later than she usually does. She normally has her scary books planned for October, but this month it sneaked up on her, and said boo, I’m here, you need to start your Halloween reading! She found some books quickly, and WHITE IS FOR WITCHING is one book that popped up that she hadn’t read before.

This novel was difficult for Ms. Hen to get into. It’s languid at first; the story does not go anywhere, and she didn’t know what was happening. It’s about a family and the haunted house where they live. Miranda and Eliot are twins, and their mother, Lily, passes away quickly when they are teenagers. Miranda suffers from pica, a type of disorder in which the patient has a desire to eat things that are not food. Miranda eats chalk and paper and dirt and does not like regular food. Her father, Luc, had worked as a chef and a restaurant critic, and he coaxes her into eating by making interesting dishes, but after her mother dies, her illness gets worse and goes into a psychiatric hospital.

This book is strange in the way that it is written. Different points of view crisscross throughout the novel, and there are line breaks with one word, and then the viewpoint changes. The house is also a character in the novel, which confused Ms. Hen when she read those sections. She had to piece together that the house was talking. She doesn’t like to work too hard when she’s reading a book. She likes to understand the plot, even though she does not like to know what will occur next.

Ms. Hen enjoyed the haunted house aspect of this novel. Luc converts Lily’s mother’s house into a bed and breakfast, and there are doors and secret passageways and a dysfunctional elevator, all that the family is not fully aware of. Miranda can sense the presence of her mother and her grandmother and her great grandmother who all suffered from pica, as she does.

A lot happens in this novel, from ghosts to complex immigrant and race relations, to tension between the twins when one does not get into university. It’s a novel about a family and loss of loved ones and relatives that the characters do not know much about.

This is not Ms. Hen’s favorite Halloween novel, but it’s not quite terrible. It’s just messy and confusing, but a lot of life can be like that. Ms. Hen doesn’t like her entertainment to cause her agita, even though she does like to be scared, but only in a satisfying way.