I am not into literary novels. For that reason alone, I probably should
have avoided this book. "White is for Witching" is a very literary read,
which translates into beautifully written but meandering, lacking in
plot, and full of characters who aren't necessarily interesting or
sympathetic. In fact, the most sympathetic characters are the minor
characters.
The story (such as it is) follows Miri and her
twin brother, Elliot, who are mourning after the death of their mother,
Lily. Miri, who had pica to begin with, totally loses it after her
mother's death and basically starves herself stupid. Very stupid. Not
stupid enough to keep her out of Cambridge (?!?!), but stupid
nonetheless. I suppose the book could be seen as chronicle of a
mentally unbalanced woman killing herself through starvation and
dragging loved ones down with her. It's not a very pleasant arc, and the
inciting incident isn't quite satisfactory, but again, it's literary
fiction. Things don't apparently have to make sense here. They often
don't.
A folk tale appears many times in the story and I
suspect WifW is supposed to be a re-imagining of the folk tale, but it
doesn't work as that for me quite. In the folk tale a soucouyant is
stealing the life force of young people. In the end, a brave girl
banishes the soucouyant by rubbing salt and pepper on her skin (which
she steps out of at night like a day dress). In WifW it's never even
clear who the soucouyant is, which is a point even made in one of the
chapter titles. In my reading the house (or the goodlady, who I think is
the soul of the house) is the most likely candidate, though Miri is
certainly also a candidate. Ore (who tells the story) makes a comment
about her story mostly being about the end of the soucouyant. I suppose
this could also be a story about the beginning of the soucouyant, though
even there it's not quite right because the house starts collecting
people long before Miri's around. It's not really clear why, or at what
point the house changes from a benign run-of-the-mill house to a rather
more sinister eat 'em up house, but there it is: we're dealing with the
end of the soucouyant, not the beginning.
I also wasn't pleased
with the dangling threads all through the book. Yes, I know it's far
more realistic to have things that are never resolved, but in a book I
don't expect half the book to be scenes that deal with something or
someone that is so peripheral to the plot they might as well not be
there. There most glaring to me were the multitude of subplots revolving
around immigrants. The Silver/Dufresne family members are very WASP-ish
and yet surrounded by immigrants, both legal and illegal, from all
corners. The Silvers are very sympathetic toward immigrants, but the
house they live in isn't. In fact, the house works hard to get rid of
everyone except the Silver women, apparently seeing even brothers and
husbands in the same light as the Kosovoan refugees are seen by society
at large. I wonder if the author was trying for an allegory here, but
it's not one that works for me.
I don't know. It's a book that
I think is trying to get me to think about it, but the characters and
plot aren't compelling enough for me to really invest in.
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