In many ways, Boy, Snow, Bird borrows from many aspects of many fairy tales and fairy-tale influenced coming-of-age novels like Jane Eyre, as you may have already discussed last week in our first discussion. Now that you’re finished with the novel, though, I want you to analyze the many ways in which Boy, Snow, Bird seems to incorporate these elements, but in order to challenge, complicate, question, or subvert them. Make sure to include quotations from the book.
Where and how, then, do you see the novel as deliberately using different kinds of shifts—in plot, character, point-of-view, style, setting and context, and beginnings and endings—in order to confront and question aspects of other stories and storytelling?
And importantly, do you see the twist ending as in keeping with those shifts, or does it contradict previous ideas? (Some of Helen Oyeyemi’s quotations and ideas from this and last week’s interviews may be applicable or useful here as well.)