In walks Mary Foxe, whom St John apparently knows, and she accuses him of being a villain. To begin with, we have St John Fox, celebrated novelist living in New York with his wife, Daphne. The effect is dizzying the reader is left uncertain what is ‘real’ and what is not. The story of Mr Fox, Reynardine, Bluebeard, Fitcher, call him who you will, is best summarised as “the usual – wooing, seduction, then – the discovery of a chopped-up predecessor” but rather than opt for a conventional “retelling” of the well-known folktale Oyeyemi deconstructs the story, visiting it again and again from various angles, telling it and retelling it, turning it inside out as she goes. Because Mr Fox is one of the best novels I have read in a long time, and that is not a thing I say lightly. Having read Mr Fox, I shall have to go back and reread White is For Witching, as I fear I may have misjudged it very badly. I don’t particularly like self-consciously beautiful writing and this seemed to fit squarely in that category. It felt a little too studied for my taste, a little too ‘creative writing class’.
I did not particularly enjoy Helen Oyeyemi’s previous novel, White is For Witching. He was the finest fellow you could ever hope to see’ ‘I’ll tell a tale of Mr Fox, how he came courting me
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