Danika reviews White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

I’m not sure I know how to summarize White is for Witching. It’s a bit of a haunted house story, sort of postmodern, Gothic-esque, definitely unsettling. It follows the story of Miranda, who at the beginning of the novel has disappeared. Her twin brother and the house she grew up in narrate the events that lead up to her disappearance, with her girlfriend getting the occasional paragraph of her perspective as well. (Yes, the house narrates part of the story. That tells you a lot about the kind of book this is.)

Honestly, I don’t have a lot to say about this one. The writing is beautiful, but I just didn’t really connect to the book as a whole. The only character I really found interesting was Ore, who doesn’t have a huge role to play in the story. In fact, most of her scenes are Ore and Miranda’s dysfunctional relationship, which left me disappointed. (Which was deliberate: this isn’t a romance, it’s more like a Gothic horror story.)

As for the plot itself, I spent a good portion of the book trying to sort out the narrators and what exactly was happening. (It took me while to really accept the house as a voice, even though it’s clearly labelled from the beginning.) After that, the events are dark and unsettling in exactly the way I’m looking for from an October read, but I think my experience with the book really suffered from reading it so quickly after House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (sadly, not a lesbian book). House of Leaves is also a haunted house story and does that incredibly well. White is for Witching is partly inspired by that story, and although they go in completely different directions, I think that Oyeyemi’s story wasn’t given a fair shot in my reading of it, since I was still trying to process House of Leaves.

I still enjoyed this book, and I definitely plan on reading more of Oyeyemi’s books, but White is for Witching never quite came together for me. I would still recommend it as a queer creepy read, perfect for a stormy October night, but I was looking for a little something more from it.