Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Boy is a beautiful, contrary young woman who runs away from her abusive rat-catcher father in New York and ends up at the end of the line in Flax Hill, an idyllic town where everyone is a specialist – whether in cake-making, jewellery or teaching history. There, she meets Arturo and his daughter Snow, a charming, distant child who entrances everyone, including Boy. But when Boy has her own daughter, whip-smart little Bird, everything changes.

Oyeyemi is a beautifully lyrical writer who excels at weaving stories within stories, spinning dark fables without a hero or moral. This is a modern fairy tale, where the uncanny flits in and out, but it is grounded in a real time and (what could be) a real place.

You never quite get a grip on the three female protagonists’ characters – even when you’re reading from their point of view, you seem to be seeing them through other characters’ eyes. Their personalities, like their reflections in the mirror, have trouble staying still long enough to be captured, and they are defined by their relationships to one another. This is an elegant, poetic tale of identity, loss and the ties that bind us to each other. [Alice Sinclair]