Boy, Snow, Bird

Helen Oyeyemi draws heavily from the genres of fairytales and folktales, and the novel as a whole is considered to be a modern fairytale. To what extent does Oyeyemi work within the constraints of the genre? To what extent does she subvert our expectations?

In what ways does Boy fit the stock character of the evil stepmother? To what extent is she conscious of those parallels? How does she consciously work against them?

Boy, Snow, Bird is divided into three sections; the first and third parts are narrated by Boy, but the middle section is narrated by Boy’s teenage daughter, Bird. What is the function of this narrative shift? How does the second part of the novel set up the concluding section?