Forethoughts: White is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi came to me from publisher Picador UK in one of these ‘first five to reply’ kind of ways. It’s definitely not the usual kind of book I’d go for but it had a synopsis that intrigued me (I checked before putting in a request for it. I’m not one of these free book ‘harvesters’), and because I also often like to step outside of my comfort zone, in the hope of finding something new and refreshing (which I often do), I put in a request for an advance of the book. That request met with success, and here I sit, book in hand, on the verge of reading it.

Before I do settle down to read White is for Witching though, I need to offer up my forethoughts and I guess what I need to look at first is what I found so intriguing about the cover blurb. Here it is in full:

In a vast, mysterious house on the cliffs near Dover, the Silver family is reeling from the hole punched into its heart. Lily is gone and her twins, Miranda and Eliot, and her husband, the gentle Luc, mourn her absence with unspoken intensity. All is not well with the house, either, which creaks and grumbles and malignly confuses visitors in its mazy rooms, forcing winter apples in the garden when the branches should be bare. Generations of women inhabit its walls. And Miranda, with her new appetite for chalk and her keen sense for spirits, is more attuned to them than she is to her brother and father. She is leaving them slowly –

Slipping away from them –

And when one dark night she vanishes entirely, the survivors are left to tell her story.

Miri I conjure you

This is a spine-tingling tale that has Gothic roots but an utterly modern sensibility. Told by a quartet of crystalline voices, it is electrifying in its expression of myth and memory, loss and magic, fear and love.

So what do you think? Sounds great doesn’t it? I must say I had to read the bit about Miranda having an ‘appetite’ for chalk twice. I couldn’t believe what I’d just read but I guess I’ve discovered characters with stranger habits (as I’m sure you have), so a chalk munching character is no big deal.

I guess what I like most about the blurb is the promise of a ‘spine-tingling tale’ with ‘Gothic roots’. If it’s written well there’s nothing like a good Gothic tale, although I’m not expecting anything like a nineteenth-century Poe tale. It would be nice if it was, but I don’t get that sense at all. Regardless, ghostly visitations and haunted houses are more than Gothic enough to be getting on with.

One of the things I like to do before I begin reading the product of a new-to-me author is to find out a little about their background, and Oyeyemi’s is as intriguing as the novel itself. Born in Nigeria but moving to London when she was only four, Oyeyemi is a writer who could definitely be labeled as somewhat prodigious. She completed her first published novel The Icarus Girl, at 18 while still at school, during the chaos of her A-Levels, which is nothing short of impressive. She’s since graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Social and Political Sciences, and has published a second novel – The Opposite House, which along with her first novel, has met with favourable reviews.

It is when one hears Oyeyemi speak though (here’s an interview with her on the NPR website), that one hears the voice of a woman with incredible articulation (well aside from not being able to really explain what her novel The Icarus Girl is about )) and a real passion for the written word. Absolutely my kind of author!

So what else can I say about White is for Witching? For now, not a lot really. I think I’ve said all I can until I’ve finished reading it. So I’ll leave my forethoughts on the novel at that, and I’ll back in a few days to let you know how I got on with it. Meantime if you fancy a taster of Oyeyemi’s work yourself, then I stumbled across an interesting short story by her, published in 2006 on the New Stateman website called “i live with him, i see his face, i go no more away” (Oh-oh! Another African-born writer mucking around with the rules of grammar. Don’t know what I’m talking about? See HERE )).

Book Details
Publisher: Picador (UK)
Published: 01 May 2009 (UK)
Format: Hardback
Pages: 256 pages
ISBN: 9780330458146

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A note about Forethoughts

Forethoughts offer an insight into my initial thoughts and impressions of a book before I read it. Informal and largely written as a stream-of-consciousness exercise in a single sitting, my ‘forethoughts’ capture an important stage of the reading experience for me – that anticipatory period before the book is first opened, when excitement is piqued for the literary ‘journey’ which lies ahead.

Captured with an undertone of blissful ignorance, at a time when the book has yet to begin its transition from being an unknown entity in my mind to eventually being something I’m wholly familiar with, my ‘forethoughts’ uniquely record my first impressions, my expectations and my preconceptions of a book. Combine my ‘forethoughts’ with my ‘afterthoughts’ (review) and the result is a record of a very personal journey through a book.