I liked Helen Oyeyemi's first novel but was quite underwhelmed by this one. I did enjoy some parts of the writing but found the different narrative voices very confusing, I ended up skim reading a bit and nothing seemed to happen or really develop. ( )

Sometimes when I'm reading a book, it's so out there that it makes me feel stupid. I think, "I bet a city woman on a subway would understand this thing." Or at least fake it. I can see this book being the subject of coffee table chatter at cocktail hour or at a ivy league campus book club, but not anywhere close to Paris, Illinois. Why? Because it's darn confusing. There are three narrators--Minerva, a yougn lady who suffers from pica (eating stuff like clay and chalk), Ore, a girlfriend Minerva meets in college, and the house. Yep, that's right, one of the narrators is a house. And it's a creepy house. All the women in Minerva's family have been crazy to some extent, so Minerva was bound to suffer from something. She gets away from the house during college, but still is sick and doesn't recover from the pica that institutionalized her during high school. Add in Minerva's twin brother who thinks Ore is beautiful, but Ore is in love with Minerva.

Okay, so the plot isn't that bad. But the switching of narration drove me nuts. There is no indication when it happens, other than things don't make sense. I kept thinking, "What is going on?" and "Why am I reading this?" I kept hoping the book would read easier, but it never happened for me. I strongly disliked this book, except for the cover. It looks reader-friendly, but the mystery of the book was destroyed with the way the mystery was told. I didn't find the house mysterious, just annoying. ( )

What do haunted houses, eating disorders and twins have in common? This novel. Other than that I'm left scratching my head over how these things had any relationship in this story.

I felt like there were some interesting elements in this novel that had some potential. However none of these elements were threaded together effectively create a cohesive novel. Instead of working these components together they seemed to be disjointed and tangential.

I was left feeling like this was a first draft of a potentially interesting story that needed to be reworked and significantly edited in order to reach its full potential. ( )

Written in a style that is both abstract and stream-of-consciousness, White Is for Witching is the story of Miranda Silver, a young woman who suffers from pica. She lives with her father and a housekeeper in their large house in Dover, which her father runs as Bed and Breakfast. Unfortunately the house seems to be filled with evil, although this evil is seldom spelled out in a way that is comprehensible. Wordy and hard to follow, it will appeal only to certain readers. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2009/09... ( )