After absolutely loving "Everything I Never Told You" I was incredibly excited to read this novel by Celeste Ng. The premise was fun and the story is intriguing but there was something off about this one. Maybe I expected too much, but I was left dissatisfied and underwhelmed by the storyline.

The story is set in idyllic Shaker Heights, a perfect planned community whose residents life by many rules. Everything is based on appearance and this gives you the first warning that not everything is as perfect as it seems. The plot is centered around two families: the Richardsons and the Warrens. The Richardsons are a settled family of 6, and the Warrens are the newcomers: Mia, an artist, and her daughter Pearl are renting an apartment from Elena Richardson.

The families are brought together through their children: the family-hungry Pearl starts spending a lot of time with the Richardsons because she loves the feeling of being a part of a family. Izzy, the black sheep of the Richardson family in turn cozies up to Mia whom she feels understands her. There is friendship, love and envy and things get further complicated when the Richardsons' friends adopt a baby that someone left in front of the firehouse. The issue is, Mia knows who the baby's mother is and she is willing to do anything to get her baby back. 

“It came, over and over, down to this: What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?” 

Playing dirty is all this novel comes down to. Elena Richardson is willing to do anything to discredit Mia and her friend in order to ensure her own friends get to keep the baby they want to adopt. She digs through Mia's past and discovers some very interesting things that mirror the situation that they are all in at the moment. The story ends at the same place it begins: with the titular little fires all over the Richardsons' house.

“I'll tell you a secret. A lot of times, parents are not the best at seeing their children clearly.”

This could be considered a Bildungsroman, I suppose. Our main character, Flora Goldwasser, does go through a transformation that changes her outlook on life. She is a New Yorker who goes to a private all-girls boarding school, where she meets - and falls in love with - an older guy. Meet Elijah Huck, a Columbia student who becomes her History tutor among other things. Her love of vintage clothing inspires him to photograph her on New York streets and launch his Miss Tulip blog. As this project grows so does the interest in the teenage girl who loves 50's fashion. But her anonymity is guaranteed. 

Flora becomes so smitten with Elijah that she decides to change schools just so she could see him again. This leads us to the Quare Academy, an unorthodox school that offers a unique academic experience. Upon arriving, Flora is so out of depth, that she frequently writes to her sister and her friends back in NY, who always offer to bail her out. Still, she perseveres in hopes of meeting Elijah again.

But when it becomes more and more obvious that he is not really interested, Flora turns to theater. While trying to express her experience through an art project that is tied into a play she is writing for the Quare's theater group, Flora finally begins to socialize with her fellow students. Their empathy and support help her open up and embrace the truly valuable things in life.

For my diploma paper last year, I translated two short stories by Helen Oyeyemi. And it was by complete chance that I found her. I knew I wanted a female writer and there was a requirement for how old the stories were to be.  As I started reading her work I became more and more entranced. I fell in love with her magical words, her transporting storytelling, the amazing, vivid worlds she created. Therefore, I decided that I was going to read some more of her writing -- and that's how we got to "Boy, Snow, Bird".

The Boy, Snow and Bird from the title are all names of the characters in the book -- all three of them female. It took me a while to get used to such unusual names, but I got over it. The story is supposed to be a retelling of Snow White, hence the character named Snow, but I struggled to find connections beside the most superficial ones.

The girl's name is Snow and she is a stunning little girl everyone fawns over. Boy is her step mom who is so disconcerted by her beauty that she sends her away to live with her aunt. Also, there is a weird thing with mirrors, where all three protagonists sometimes disappear and just cannot see their reflections in a mirror, though no one else seems to notice anything amiss. There are also some magical elements that simply left me confused but I suppose were intended to contribute to the overall fairy tale-like atmosphere.

This book contains certain revelations, unveilings of long-hidden and deeply-buried secrets. One of these pertains to race and I can appreciate the way it's done. The fact is - I am white and Oyeyemi is black and I have nothing to contribute to her handling of this issues. All I can say is that it was an interesting subplot and that I like how she made it a point that all secrets are revealed over time. The other big revelation is about Boy's father. This one was unexpected and I feel like it was just gratuitous - put there to shock the reader, but I never felt any build-up to it nor any payoff. It was all very bizarre and I still don't know how I feel about it. 

All in all, I felt let down by this book. I expected much more but what I got was simply, well - weird. It took me while to get through this book and I contemplated DNF-ing it several times but my pragmatic side won out - I spent money on it, I needed to read it. I am glad that I got through it, but I don't feel like I could honestly recommend it to someone.

Have you read this novel? What did you think about it?

Let's be honest, the cover was what attracted me to this book. I was so enamored with it, it was like a magnet in the bookstore. I was not thrilled when I read the name Tracy Chevalier on the cover because I had never read anything by her and... let's say that I had certain preconceived notions about her writing. Still, the blurb underneath the title said "Stories inspired by works of Charlotte Bronte" and as a Bronte fan (OK, an Emily Bronte fan) I decided that this would be enough of a reason for me to buy it.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that I read it as soon as I got home. Quite the opposite, actually. I was in a funk for a while - a crazy limbo where I kept buying books, but I wasn't reading them. Then, one day I decided that I would give it a try. So, I actually cracked the book open and realized that these were short stories by various writes and that Chevalier's name is on the cover because she is the editor, not the sole writer. Happy day! 

What these stories have in common is that they all revolve around the sentence "Reader, I married him." that Jane Eyre says in the final chapter of her eponymous novel. They tell the tales of different women and their marriages - some wanted, others not so much - and how they have coped, exploring the happily-ever-after we are supposed to get after saying "I do." Do we get it? Well, some do, while others either suffer in silence or decide to call it quits.

Each author has brought something fresh and new to the table, and every story is a different approach to the theme. Some of the stories didn't work for me, I have to admit, but I liked most, and I feel it is important to read each of them in order to expose ourselves to different perspectives. There is a story that offers Jane's perspective on married life, a story from Mr Rochester's point of view, a same-sex romance, stories that are obviously tied to the source and some that seem s far removed that you wonder if the author knew the assignment. In the end, I did not find this to be something that diminishes the quality of the story.

The ones that I remember loving even now (and I read this a while ago, this post is a long time coming) are the stories by Emma Donoghue (a story about a woman who goes away from her children and her domineering minister husband in order to recuperate, and finds love in an unexpected place), Elif Shafak (a naive Turkish girl is ready to throw everything she knows away for a visiting Dutch boy but reality smacks her in the face) and Patricia Park (a Korean girl moves from Argentina to the USA to find a better life for herself).

I believe this collection is worth the read. It is not heavy and does not require too much emotional investment. The reading ca also be spread out as these are 20 separate stories, therefore you  don't have to read them all at once as there is no cohesive plot to keep track of.