I am guessing this was probably the most twisted retelling of Snow White I have ever read.

 

My feelings are a bit conflicted on this, though they always seem to be on Helen Oyeyemi novels. They are weird. Lyrical and often intriguing, but I'm never sure I really feel like I get the payoff at the end of the novel that I am hoping I will.

 

Boy, Snow, and Bird are not just a random string of nouns, they are the actual names of the three main characters of the novel. Snow plays the obvious role in a Snow White retelling, except not really at all. The pieces for the retelling of the story never quite came together for me, and I never really connected to the main characters. I was confused as to what their motivations were, which would have been fine if they had done anything, but the combination of them not really doing anything and not having clear motivations and not really being likeable or relatable made this a rough read for me.

 

I think it might have worked better without trying to add the very basic framework of the fairy tale, because it almost never comes into play in any real way. There is a character named Snow, yes, and she has a stepmother. Said stepmother may or may not be evil, there is a side plot (or perhaps it is the main plot?) dealing with racism, and Bird's place in the whole story is still a mystery to me.

 

There seems to perhaps be magic here, though it is never explained or looked at closely and I'm still not sure that some of the characters weren't just kind of crazy.

 

I guess in the end it is a story about motherhood, and about how not to be a mother, or the reasons why being a mother won't work for some people. Honestly, the whole thing (much like the previous novel of hers I read) left me deeply confused. It was well-written, I would say, but I never connected properly with it and it didn't resonate with me at all. I could follow the plot, or what there was of it, but not the point of the plot. Why did it end where it did? What am I supposed to take from this? I can't answer those questions, and I'm not intrigued enough to bother trying to sort them out. 

 

I liked this a lot better than Paper Towns, although the two are often compared (and for good reason).

 

John Green books never seem to hit me as hard as they hit most people. I tend to enjoy his characters (well, most of his characters) and his dialogue is a lot of fun, but the plotlines tend to not make me cry the way they seem to for other people, and I always feel like they are a bit melodramatic. This was true for this book as well.

 

Alaska is easier to empathize with than some of his other kind of zany female characters. I get the idea that her actions stem from something real as opposed to just being a part of her personality we are supposed to think is cute, and she had a background that genuinely made me feel for her.

 

I didn't really enjoy the whole boarding school crap that they were all doing. The sheer amount of trouble these kids get into was kind of ridiculous, and I just can't manage to relate. I couldn't have as an actual teenager, and I certainly can't now. It's all just a little odd to me. Some of the practical jokes played (in particular the last one) were fun, though, and I enjoyed that aspect. But the smoking and the drinking seemed insanely over-the-top to me. Maybe that is really what happens, but if so it is a part of teenagehood I never experienced or even really saw, so it felt odd to have it included as a matter of course. Is this what is is/was like to be a teenager off at boarding school and I am just way out of the loop?

 

Pudge was a little bit lame in a few ways (his obsession with Alaska being the primary one), but I liked him well enough for him to carry the book. The Colonel was over-the-top, but added some color.

There was a message here. It came out without being terribly preachy or annoying and stayed just this side of cheesy, and unlike some books it was a message worth broadcasting, but this was absolutely supposed to be an uplifting sort of book, and that aspect didn't quite work for me.

 

It also didn't quite work as a mystery, because I guessed a chunk of the "answer," and was thus vaguely annoyed at how long it took the boys to put together the pieces.  In addition, it was not really the kind of mystery that was strictly "solveable" in a sense that we are sure, even at the end, whether the answer was right. It was an explanation for something otherwise inexplicable, but aspects of what happened remain in the dark and always will. That might be part of the message, perhaps--John Green seems very keen on the idea that you can never completely understand someone else.

 

I did enjoy it, but I always find myself wanting to like John Green books more than I actually do. I get the idea I would like him and I like the way he writes, but I never connect the way I feel like I should. His books and I are two puzzle pieces that almost fit, but no matter how many times we jam them together there is never that satisfying "click" noise where we connect.