White is for Witching

Helen Oyeyemi

2010 Winner

Somerset Maugham Award

02 April 2010
9780330458153
256 pages

Synopsis

Haunting in every sense, White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi is a spine-tingling tribute to the power of magic, myth and memory.

High on the cliffs near Dover, the Silver family is reeling from the loss of Lily, mother of twins Eliot and Miranda, and beloved wife of Luc. Miranda misses her with particular intensity. Their mazy, capricious house belonged to her mother’s ancestors, and to Miranda, newly attuned to spirits, newly hungry for chalk, it seems they have never left. Forcing apples to grow in winter, revealing and concealing secret floors, the house is fiercely possessive of young Miranda . . .

Superbly atmospheric. The dark tones of Poe in her haunting have the elasticity of Haruki Murakami’s surreal mental landscapes.
The kind of prose that creeps off the page, crawls up the spine and burrows deep into the reader’s paralysed mind.
White is for Witching should establish Oyeyemi as an ambitious voice in modern macabre; master of the light, lyrical touch and dark, half-hinted suggestion.

Books by Helen Oyeyemi