White Is for Witching

White Is for Witching is a novel by the British writer Helen Oyeyemi, published in 2009 and issued in Britain as Pie-kah. It was her third novel, and it draws on the ghost story, the vampire story and the haunted-house story at the same time.

Miranda Silver is a twin, and she and her brother Eliot grew up in a house in Dover that their father later turned into a guest house. Miranda has pica, a compulsive appetite for things that are not food, a condition that runs in the women of her family and grew worse after her mother died.

The house is a presence in its own right: it is sentient, it dislikes strangers, and it is not a safe place to be a guest. The narration shifts between Miranda, Eliot, the house and others, so the story is never delivered from one settled point of view.

Oyeyemi tells the book across more than one timeline, moving through the family's history as well as the events of the present. It is a standalone novel.