RaveAV ClubWhile the novel is a sweeping, historical family epic with touches of magical realism, immediately putting it in a similar vein to Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years Of Solitude or Toni Morrison’s Song Of Solomon or Isabel Allende’s The House Of The Spirits, such comparisons may also be doing a disservice. Yanique’s voice is her own ... Despite having several narrators telling many sides of the same story, this is essentially the tale of two sisters, Eeona and Anette—the bonds holding them together and the differences, the secrets, that threaten to fracture them irreparably and even eradicate the enduring legacy of their family. It’s a tale about how they awaken and adjust to their father’s harmful choices, how modernization and politics eventually find their way to what seemed to be an idyllic island existence. Yanique’s novel is a vivid, shimmering, lyrical portrait, a love letter to these islands and to the hypnotic, dangerous power of the sea.
Hilton Als
RaveAV ClubAscribing one genre to this collection would feed into the series of labels and limitations under which everyone and everything gets filed, especially when examining artifacts of pop culture—labels Als himself must ascribe to ... These musings dabble in memoir, essay, cultural criticism, even speculative fiction involving some intersection of real people and fictional characters ... Intentionally abrasive and going out of his way to be canon-shattering, Als interweaves personal revelation with cultural touchstones, sometimes hopping from topic to topic at a breakneck speed, other times examining concepts so strategically and methodically his words become scalpels, flaying open unacknowledged bias, privilege, and conflict where he sees it ... Though astounding in its scope and erudition, the book isn’t entirely without fault ... Yet while this (perhaps intentional) failure to establish a rhythm can give readers whiplash, Als skillfully and seductively reels them back in with a well-placed throwaway line that is so utterly poignant as to take one’s breath away.
Helen Oyeyemi
PositiveA.V. Club\"... it appears [Oyeyemi\'s] finally gotten her recipe just right ... The novel is an intensely dramatic ride ... If there’s one thread to Boy, Snow, Bird that doesn’t quite pay off, it would be that novel is divided tidily into three parts, which initially seems to be a prime opportunity to reflect its triptych of a title. But two parts are told from Boy’s point of view, and one from Bird’s. This leads to Snow seeming less fleshed-out, though she is of utmost importance.\
