Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

Posted on February 5, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Of the Oyeyemis, this one leans toward the more accessible for me, which is not to say I entirely understood what was going on, but I had a lower rate of whaaat?? than in some cases. I’m still not sure what it is about this author that although she frequently bewilders me I’m still on board.

Mr. Fox is, in most cases, a writer. Mary Foxe is his creation: a fictional character, or a muse, or an imaginary friend. There is also a Mrs. Fox, Daphne, who is married to Mr. Fox in the (if you will) real world; in some versions she is his third wife. She is jealous of Mary Foxe, whose existence is often in some question. There are various iterations of these circumstances throughout the book; it claims to be a novel (it’s right there on the cover!) but I would buy it as a collection of linked stories. Sometimes there are literal foxes. Often there is some reference, if oblique, to fairy tales. I don’t entirely agree with the back-of-book blurb’s description of what happens here, which is interesting. It is possible that one of us is wrong, of course, me or the blurb-writer–likely me, although I’ve seen the other happen!–but I think it’s possible that Oyeyemi has left things a bit up in the air.

I thought we had an organizing principle, briefly, in the idea that Mary was pushing Mr. Fox to do less killing off of his characters, particularly his female characters. (He is not an especially likeable man, and this is one manifestation of something unpleasant about his attitude toward women.)

What you’re doing is building a horrible kind of logic. People read what you write and they say, ‘Yes, he is talking about things that really happen,’ and they keep reading, and it makes sense to them. You’re explaining things that can’t be defended, and the explanations themselves are mad, just bizarre–but you offer them with such confidence. It was because she kept the chain on the door; it was because he needed to let off steam after a hard day’s scraping and bowing at work; it was because she was irritating and stupid; it was because she lied to him, made a fool of him; it was because she had to die, just had to, it makes dramatic sense; it was because ‘nothing is more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman’; it was because of this, it was because of that. It’s obscene to make such things reasonable.

I would have been interested in this guiding principle for the novel, but that is not this novel. It’s only a thread.

I’m going to stop saying much about Oyeyemi’s books. I more or less understood this one and it was an interesting ride. I’ll read another. If you know of a class I could sign up for online to help these books make more sense, I would pay for such a class (no joking).

Rating: 8 fountain pens.

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The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi

Posted on November 27, 2023 by pagesofjulia

I am a glutton for punishment, if that’s what this is (it isn’t). I’m a glutton for keeping myself slightly confused? Considering the challenge I generally feel when I read Oyeyemi, a sense of something unfinished and not entirely understood, it seems a little odd that I keep doing this; but the enjoyment frequently makes the unsettled feeling worthwhile. Sometimes more than others – I think Gingerbread (the first I read) was my favorite, with The Icarus Girl least rewarding. I remember feeling very pleased recently by that story collection, although I see I rated it no higher than Icarus, so what does that mean? At any rate. The challenge and (often) frustration I feel seems to still balance against what I’m getting out of these. I have another waiting on the shelf now.

The Opposite House holds together in that I’m always fairly sure what’s going on: a good start. There are two young women in this plot, whose worlds we alternate between. One is more or less a mortal human in a world I recognize as my own; the other, less so. Yemaya Saramagua lives in the somewherehouse. “A somewherehouse is a brittle tower of worn brick and cedar wood, its roof cradled in a net of brushwood… The basement’s back wall holds two doors. One door takes Yemaya straight out into London and the ragged hum of a city after dark. The other door opens out onto the striped flag and cooking-smell cheer of that tattered jester, Lagos–always, this door leads to a place that is floridly day.” Other people (?) live in the somewherehouse, too, seemingly unrelated and not especially in touch with Yemaya (frequently just Aya).

And then there is Maja, who lives in London with her boyfriend, Aaron. She is newly pregnant with the son she has always known she would someday have. She was born in Cuba to Black Cuban academics; her mother is also a Santería priest (rare for a woman). Maja has a younger brother named Tomás, nicknamed “the London baby” because he was born there. (Maja believes “there’s an age beyond which it is impossible to lift a child from the pervading marinade of an original country, pat them down with a paper napkin and then deep-fry them in another country, another language like hot oil scalding the first language away. I arrived here just before that age.” She was seven.) She has a best friend, Amy Eleni. Together, this crew navigates Maja’s pregnancy (though few know about it within this novel’s timespan) and other challenges.

Meanwhile, Aya struggles to inhabit her identity as spirit / god alongside the people / gods she relates to in various cultures… in this world, the deities of Yoruba and Santería faiths move around, as their congregants do, which is why she is disjointed, and why the confusion of the other residents of the somewherehouse. This part is a bit squishy for me (not least because I’m not particularly familiar with any faith traditions). The Yoruba gods get crossed with Catholic ones, going underground at some points in cultural & regional history for safety’s sake. Are Maja and Aya linked? Are they… the same woman? I don’t think so, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

Maja’s rather more rooted, human life makes more sense to me than Aya’s does, but the uncertainty of the two threads are working for me here, better than they sometimes do.

Lovely; I will certainly keep up with my muddled studies in the Oyeyemi worlds.

Rating: 8 wet flowers.

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What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

Posted on October 13, 2023 by pagesofjulia

I continue to wrestle with Oyeyemi, whom I admire but who leaves me confused as often as she leaves me delighted. I think this is the one I like best (of whose I’ve read), alongside or just below Gingerbread. It definitely had its more challenging stories, but finished strong, and maybe that’s the win: leave me on a high note.

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is, first of all, a great title; it is also a short story collection whose contents I thought unconnected until rather late in the game. There are a few recurring characters, actually, but their relationships across stories are limited. It’s mostly disconnected. There is a linking subject or theme: keys, and locks. In some stories they are literal and physical, in some more metaphoric, and in a few the reader has to think a bit to make the concept fit (like an ill-fitting key, ha), but it will. I like that as a through-line.

“books and roses” introduces a couple who are lost to each other, whose keys open doors to a garden of books and a library of roses. “‘sorry’ doesn’t sweeten her tea” contains many fascinating ideas and sub-stories, but it’s mercurial in its focus, quickly shifting which character we seem to be watching; I was actually charmed throughout, but left pretty baffled, too… unlike some stories, it at least left me in a place that felt like an ending. “is your blood as red as this?”, the longest story in the collection, left me less satisfied – like, what just happened? I can handle feeling this way occasionally, but if it gets too frequent I’ll become frustrated or lose interest.

But soon came “presence,” which also put its reader through some fast switches, but left me again in a place I felt a little surer footing. “a brief history of the homely wench society” and “dornička and the st. martin’s day goose” were both downright delightful, leaving me giggling and tickled and thought-provoked. The first sets out the history of two gender-based rival clubs at Cambridge, and the latter offers a twist on Little Red Riding Hood. After one odder one, we finish with “if a book is locked there’s probably a good reason for that don’t you think,” which felt like the perfect note to end on: a little shape-shifting as its setting moves from a realistically boring workplace drama to something decidedly metaphysical, with a neat fable built in, and a magical flourish of an ending. With that taste in my mouth, I feel good about this collection. My overall impression remains that Oyeyemi may be much smarter than I am.

I confess I’m a little comforted that a Guardian reviewer found these stories somewhat uneven; that makes me feel better, like maybe I missed some things because the stories weren’t quite perfect? But I always doubt myself, because Oyeyemi seems to have so much going on. I’m afraid it’s me. I don’t always relish an author making me feel not so smart, but I don’t think that’s what she’s out to do here, and so I don’t hold it against her. I think her imagination may be a bit wider and more flexible than mine. She’s pretty special, and I’ve just ordered the rest of her books that aren’t yet on my shelf, so you can stay tuned and expect that we’ll use the Oyeyemi tag some more.

Rating: 7 comments.

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Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

Posted on January 20, 2023 by pagesofjulia

For this review I created a new tag, Oyeyemi, to represent my continuing confusion about how to categorize her mysterious novels. I was tempted to call it ‘mystery’ but I’ll settle for ‘puzzle,’ with suspense and speculative elements, a contemporary/magical setting and absolutely its own set of rules. My enjoyment outweighed my bemusement – not that the latter prevents the former but it can make it a little harder. I am charmed and perplexed. I’ll do my best here.

Our narrator for most of the novel is Otto. He’s on a train with his partner Xavier. They are taking a honeymoon but not really because they are not married. They are traveling with their pet mongoose, Árpád XXX (as in the roman numerals), who is descended from a long line of mongooses called Árpád who have been companions to Otto’s family. The train is a former tea smuggling train with a most unusual full-time resident, its owner, Ava Kapoor, who receives copious hate mail for her family’s past crimes. She is an heiress set to inherit under unusual terms which have led her to live on her train, served by a staff consisting of her girlfriend and a sterner woman with more sinister outside employment… She also keeps a pet mongoose (naturally?!) and plays a theremin. So far I’m just listing weird elements, right? That’s part of the point. There are invisible people, or people who may or may not actually exist, and who may or may not be the same person. And it is on this weird train – whose most unusual cars possess (of course) strange traits – that the partnered Otto and Xavier discover they may have some history in common that they didn’t know about, not only with each other but with Ava Kapoor.

It was a raucous adventure and a puzzle whose solution I’m still not sure of. I enjoyed the locked-room aspect of the train as setting (very Agatha Christie), and the mongooses, and the eccentric old aunt character (who sends our non-honeymooners on their trip), and the questions about art and pursuing one’s creative processes. It is, I think, about that concept of “being seen.” I am all the way off balance about the whole thing but still intrigued by Helen Oyeyemi’s singular mind. I don’t know what to tell you at all; your mileage may vary.

Rating: 8 letters.

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Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Posted on January 16, 2023 by pagesofjulia

My third Oyeyemi. She is brilliant and fascinating; her books have a momentum of their own. I am often left with the sense that she is smarter than me, that more is happening here than I was able to grasp. Gingerbread was the novel of hers that I most enjoyed, The Icarus Girl was the most confusing, and this one fits in the middle of the list by both measures.

I am going to keep this summary pretty brief, because there are some good-sized spoilers in the novel. We meet our protagonist, Boy Novak, when she is in her late teens. She has white-blond hair, a face somewhere between ‘harsh’ and ‘fine-boned,’ and a fascination with mirrors. She speaks to other versions of herself in them. She may be lonely. She lives in Manhattan with her father, a rat catcher and seriously abusive, until she runs away at age 20. She takes the last bus of the night to the end of the line, arriving in Flax Hill, Massachusetts in 1953 with few possessions, but she is able to start fresh, making friends, dating, working odd jobs, eventually marrying a man with a craft, a family, and a dear daughter named Snow. Part One is told in Boy’s first-person voice, but Parts Two and Three will shift perspective.

I can go no further with summary. The setting remains chiefly in Flax Hill, with exposition traveling to Boston, Mississippi, and back to New York. Oyeyemi’s characters are completely fascinating; among the secondary characters I love most are Mia, a driven journalist and free-thinker, and Mrs. Fletcher, who runs a bookshop and acts as a bit of a community mentor. Boy, Snow, Bird is concerned with race and gender identity, the true nature of love, family dynamics, damage and forgiveness, sisterhood, motherhood, and national and societal patterns around race and racism. It is billed as a bit of a riff on the Snow White tale, but is not exactly a retelling. There is the girl Snow; there is a stepmother who is (at one point) accused of evil; there is something strange going on with mirrors, and not only for Boy. There is definitely some commentary on vanity, beauty, and the shaping of family by these means. But it strays quite far from the fairy tale. Actually, this would be an awfully interesting one to study alongside stricter retellings. I feel unable to say more.

There are lots of images and concepts that I’m going to keep revisiting. I’m not sure I got it all: not always a comfortable feeling, but certainly a stimulating one. No question, I’m going to continue my study of Oyeyemi. Stay tuned. I do recommend this one, and feel free to come back and explain it to me.

Rating: 7 records.

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The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

Posted on March 11, 2022 by pagesofjulia

This one was more difficult for me than Gingerbread was. Still intriguing, but more mysterious, more opaque. When we meet her, Jessamy Harrison, age 8, lives in England with her white English father and her black Nigerian mother. She struggles socially and in school, and feels most secure hiding in the dark. When her family moves for a time to Nigeria, to live with her mother’s father and extended family there, she makes her first friend: a girl apparently her own age, hiding out on the premises of the family compound. TillyTilly is an enigma, and insists that Jess ask no questions. When Jess’s family returns to England, TillyTilly finds a way to follow, and this is when things get weird.

I’ve seen The Icarus Girl labelled as a horror novel, which makes a certain amount of sense, but it doesn’t feel like its primary goal is to frighten me – frightening though it is, by the end. Instead, it feels chiefly concerned with Jessamy’s identity and her difficulty finding a home in a world that doesn’t make sense to her. She is scared most of the time, but mostly without reason, and more or less knows this doesn’t make sense. She is bullied at school, and reacts in rages or tantrums. She’s never had a friend, and neither of her parents knows how to relate to her. Therefore she’s ripe for the affections of a (perhaps equally strange) friend – her first ever! – to hold great influence.

There’s a fair amount of Yoruba culture and language baked into the novel’s themes. There are a lot of pairings and contrasts, first in Jessamy’s dual English/Nigerian heritage and racial/ethnic makeup, and the story’s back-and-forth travel between the two locations. I don’t want to give anything else away, but doubles are important.

I found Gingerbread more accessible, and more easy to enjoy. Certainly, this one offered more horror, and significantly less whimsy and humor. It kept my attention, though, and I have the distinct impression that there’s more going on in its layers than I’m equipped to grasp. Impressive? Yes.

I’m super curious about Oyeyemi’s other work.

Rating: 7 books.

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Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

Posted on May 24, 2021 by pagesofjulia

Helen Oyeyemi’s reputation is stellar, and her backlist is healthy: six novels besides this one and a story collection, and she’s just 36. (Wow.) With this, my first of her books, I’m adding my voice to the chorus. Oyeyemi is a prodigious talent.

Gingerbread is under 300 pages, but I’m still a little intimidated by the task of saying what all is in it. There are three generations of women in our story from the start, and they remain our focus. Margot Lee, her daughter Harriet, and Harriet’s daughter Perdita make up a very close family, and the titular gingerbread is a family recipe with magical powers, apparently – but literally, or figuratively speaking? They live in London, but Margot and Harriet come originally from a country called Druhástrana, where Perdita has never visited. [I was immediately intrigued by the name Perdita: this word in Latin means lost; it is the name of a moon of Uranus; and it is the name of the heroine of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Which of these undertones is intended or instructive here? Maybe all of them.] “Several prominent thinkers have proposed reclassifying Druhástrana as a purely notional/mythical land”; at any rate, it is unclear how one would get there, or from there to here.

There are magical elements sprinkled throughout, in a book that is mostly realistic; just enough magic, then, to keep me a bit off balance in my reading of this world. Perdita has four dolls that speak (and not just to her); they are like her chorus, in the classical Greek sense. The Lee family gingerbread has powers, certainly. Druhástrana is a land of rather more magic: “She’d seen some plant-vertebrate combinations in the clearings, glassy gazing dormice and owls that earth had risen up around; the ground was growing them, and they looked uncomfortable, as if they’d been stretched and stuffed with straw. There was a leaf that people chewed for relief from pain, and the girl brought this leaf to the plant-vertebrate combinations when she had time; it seemed to make things a bit better for them.” Another girl “had two pupils in each eye; that’s why her eyes looked like bottomless lakes in the torchlight.”

Perdita, being a remarkable 17-year-old, manages a rather extreme act in search of her motherland. As she lays in bed recuperating from this adventure, Harriet sits with her (and her four speaking dolls) and tells the story of her own – Harriet’s – childhood and coming of age. This is the story of growing up in Druhástrana, the legacy of the gingerbread, and Perdita’s heretofore unknown paternity; it’s a story of families and class distinctions, and it takes up the bulk of the novel, right up until the story told at Perdita’s bedside moves into the present, when they get up and go continue to live it.

I love these characters: strong women with strong senses of humor and independence, and wise one-liners. “Everybody around her was living out a different story in which events had different causes and motivations according to how they were perceived.” “Life isn’t ill-natured; it’s just dirt poor, like any other public resource.” Harriet’s anxieties about the intimidating, insular Parental Power Association (what Perdita’s school has in place of a Parent Teacher Association) and its social structure are priceless, hilarious, and relatable.

I’m a sucker for a blend of realism with a few key points of wild unreality, which we find here, and I fell hard for Margot, Harriet, and Perdita. There is a real satisfaction to this novel’s ending, even if it doesn’t tie up all loose ends. I’m definitely in for more from Oyeyemi.

Rating: 8 powders.

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