White is for Witching

I can't decide if the elements of this book that left me unsatisfied were deliberately constructed this way by Oyeyemi or not. 

The themes in the book are interesting ones: family tragedy, a haunted house connected to a family over generations, the manifestation of societal ideas (racism, homophobia) in a particular place. Many of these are picked up and displayed but not returned to in a meaningful way. The atmosphere and lack of a means to apprehend precisely what's going on are a part of the genre, but in this book, ultimately left me feeling unsatisfied as a reader.

The main character, Miranda, feels more like someone we are observing things happen to, rather than a character into whom we get much insight. Perhaps this is deliberate and a subtle nod that we are really in the position of another of the major characters in the book, rather than Miranda who, ostensibly, is our prime narrator. (I won't go into the other character it might be for fear of spoilers.)

Some of the themes that Oyeyemi takes up in this book, particular racism, are given very interesting and thought-provoking treatments. The idea that notions like racism can take root not only in people but in particular places and subsequently be visited upon people in those places by the place itself is a very interesting one to think about, particularly with a twenty-first century treatment.

I appreciate a bit of strange and surreality in books like this one. The sense of being lost, confused, and disoriented is part of the enjoyment of gothic stories for me. Particularly haunted house stories. However, this one felt as though it didn't give me enough of the concrete to hang on to in the midst of the surreal. Not a bad book, but not the book for me either.