White is for Witching
Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award
One of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists
From the acclaimed author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Gingerbread, and Peaces
There’s something strange about the Silver family house in the closed-off town of Dover, England. Grand and cavernous with hidden passages and buried secrets, it’s been home to four generations of Silver women—Anna, Jennifer, Lily, and now Miranda, who has lived in the house with her twin brother, Eliot, ever since their father converted it to a bed-and-breakfast. The Silver women have always had a strong connection, a pull over one another that reaches across time and space, and when Lily, Miranda’s mother, passes away suddenly while on a trip abroad, Miranda begins suffering strange ailments. An eating disorder starves her. She begins hearing voices. When she brings a friend home, Dover’s hostility toward outsiders physically manifests within the four walls of the Silver house, and the lives of everyone inside are irrevocably changed. At once an unforgettable mystery and a meditation on race, nationality, and family legacies, White is for Witching is a boldly original, terrifying, and elegant novel by a prodigious talent.
Loved by our collective!
I haven't met a Helen Oyeyemi book that I didn't love, a trend that continues with this gothic novel. Oyeyemi’s signature playfulness creates a uniquely unsettling tone as she guides the reader through layers of horror hiding in plain sight in Dover, England.
White is for Witching is a haunted house story, a loose retelling of the infamous lesbian vampire novel, “Carmilla," and a sharp exploration of the nationalism and white-supremacy that seep through generations of white women, hungry for the blood of the "other."
Content Warnings: Disordered eating (pica), xenophobia
Product Details
- Paperback
- 304 pages
- ISBN
- 9781594633072
- Publisher
- Riverhead Books (2/4/14)
- Dimensions
- 5.1 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
- Tags
Tags
queer + creepy