First Impressions Review: White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi

 


            I very much enjoyed this book, even though it turned out not to be a story about witches, in the classic sense of “women who do magic”. The Silver women are in no way in control of the magical goings-on connected to their spooky, sentient house in Dover. Well, except perhaps the last Ms. Silver…but I’m getting ahead of myself! No, this is more in the vein of a family-secrets-heavy haunted house gothic novel. If there is anyone doing witchy stuff it is mostly 29 Barton road, the house that is a POV character in itself. If you enjoyed Netflix’s ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ for its spooky vibes, explorations of grief and guilt, and Sapphic subplot, you would probably like this book! If you need the magic to be explained, on the other hand…best look elsewhere, because like Mary Poppins Ms. Oyeyemi never explains anything.

            The modern-day Silvers consist of 17-year-old Miranda, her twin brother Eliot, and her father Luc. The mother, Lily, died in Haiti on a photography assignment several years ago, and Miri carries a great deal of guilt because she and Eliot sensed something was wrong and Eliot told her not to fall asleep…but she did. Like many of the other Silver women, Miri has an eating disorder which is partially pica (she snacks on chalk) but also something akin to anorexia (she doesn’t usually want real food at all), and she had a sort of breakdown a few years ago where she forgot who she was. The house is solicitous toward her as toward all the Silver women, claiming it wants to protect them…but what transpires doesn’t bear much resemblance to what we’d typically think of as protection.

            Ore doesn’t really get introduced until partway through the book, but her words are the first we hear:

“Where is Miranda? Miranda Silver is in Dover. In the ground beneath her mother’s house. Her throat is blocked with a slice of apple (to stop her speaking words that might betray her) her ears are filled with earth (to keep her from hearing sounds that will confuse her) her eyes are closed, but her heart thrums hard like hummingbird wings. Does she remember me at all I miss her I miss the way her eyes are the same shade of grey no matter the strength or weakness of the light I miss the taste of her I see her in my sleep, a star planted seed-deep, her arms outstretched, her fists clenched, her black dress clinging to her like mud. She chose this as the only way to fight the soucouyant.” Though she was raised by a white adoptive family, Ore is of Nigerian descent. The soucoyant (also referenced in ‘Skinfolk’) is a West Indian monster she is interested in, an old woman who takes off her skin, turning into a soul-devouring ball of fire. Ore tells Miranda the story when she asks for one “about a girl who gets away…from the happy ending that isn’t really happy after all”; Ore was thinking of the girl who defeats the soucoyant by putting pepper in her skin – though she doesn’t get away, because “she was born free” - but Miri notes that the monster is also a girl, and she “gets away” by joining her flame with the rising sun.  

            Anyone who would dismiss Ore’s background, or that of the African housekeeper Sade, or the various Kosovan refugees, as some kind of “forced diversity” unrelated to the main story about the white family would be missing the point, I think. For one thing, whether they are like “nope, screw this, we’re out of here” like the original Kurdish housekeeper and her family, or working on anti-juju charms like Sade, or blaming Miri for a rash of stabbings in the neighborhood like her classmate Tijana…these folks know something is up! And I think they know not just because they come from cultures that still recognize the supernatural, but because things happen to them that mainstream British society doesn’t see or care about just as that society and her male relatives don’t recognize what is happening to Miri. The story of the man who hanged himself in immigration detention, a story that never made it into the local Dover paper, is emblematic of that, I think. Eliot and Luc are not bad people. They love Miri…but they are neglectful in ways that we all can be when we get caught up in our own concerns and aren’t forced to pay attention to someone else’s. And when they do notice her struggling, they can’t really see it in a wholistic way, but just focus on trying to tempt her to consume more calories, for example. The immigrant theme fits in the way the house has definite ideas about who belongs and who does not, too. Then again, the house claims: “I can only be as good as they are. We are on the inside, and we have to stay together, and we absolutely cannot have anyone else.” The house’s manner of protection is arguably very patriarchal as well – claiming, for instance, that you shouldn’t feel sorry for one of the women it swallowed because she was a bad mother and, anyway, she lived a long time, safe and protected from the upsetting world out there.

            The ending of the book is ambiguous. There are hints, as Ore says in her introduction, that Miranda is still there, even still communicating with her (increasingly unstable) brother. But what exactly she’s doing…that’s for the reader to decide.

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