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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
I loved this and will be hunting down all her other novels.
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I’m having trouble starting this review, because I find the stories of this collection almost indescribable. I’m tempted to just leave the review as quotes, but even those out of context feel flat.
*
A key ring gets left in your care and you reject all responsibility for it yet can’t bring yourself to throw it away.
Keys are a recurring theme throughout the collection, prominent in the first story, “books and roses,” less so in others, culminating with a lock in the last story, no key to be found, but there is a quiet woman with a locked book.
*
The story “presence” is a wise one, touching on married love, older love, death, insecurity, and instability in domiciles with maybe-ghosts, or illusions, where it’s always 12:30; while “a brief history of the homely wench society” is a university tale with nary a surreal element. If the latter is my least favorite, it’s still charming and intelligent. It also brought back my own university days when we freshmen girls on my floor in a coed dorm created a group named after a ludicrous phrase a boy had used on one of us.
*
This happened and it didn’t happen
It’s not the characters, certainly not the plots, but the atmosphere of each story I find so appealing and mesmerizing. How do you describe something as amorphous as atmosphere? Perhaps as more of a fog that rose inexorably over all their words and deeds so that they were either forgotten or misremembered as in the story, “is your blood as red as this?” The subtitles of the story answer that question, first, (NO), then, (YES). Reading this story about puppeteers and puppets, though who is which isn’t always clear, I felt this fog throughout, and I marvel over Oyeyemi's achievement. This being Oyeyemi, the puppets are sentient beings à la Pinocchio; and though there’s a character named Gepetta, this is not the Collodi story, except for maybe its matter-of-fact weirdness.
*
Though I hesitate to call any of these stories retellings, there are allusions and nods to other tales: The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse; The Juniper Tree; and more, including those I didn’t recognize, I’m sure. Besides these fairy/folktale motifs, characters also recur in some of the stories. None of them seem important, except to emphasize that it was Oyeyemi’s world I was living in.
*
A key ring gets left in your care and you reject all responsibility for it yet can’t bring yourself to throw it away.
Keys are a recurring theme throughout the collection, prominent in the first story, “books and roses,” less so in others, culminating with a lock in the last story, no key to be found, but there is a quiet woman with a locked book.
*
The story “presence” is a wise one, touching on married love, older love, death, insecurity, and instability in domiciles with maybe-ghosts, or illusions, where it’s always 12:30; while “a brief history of the homely wench society” is a university tale with nary a surreal element. If the latter is my least favorite, it’s still charming and intelligent. It also brought back my own university days when we freshmen girls on my floor in a coed dorm created a group named after a ludicrous phrase a boy had used on one of us.
*
This happened and it didn’t happen
It’s not the characters, certainly not the plots, but the atmosphere of each story I find so appealing and mesmerizing. How do you describe something as amorphous as atmosphere? Perhaps as more of a fog that rose inexorably over all their words and deeds so that they were either forgotten or misremembered as in the story, “is your blood as red as this?” The subtitles of the story answer that question, first, (NO), then, (YES). Reading this story about puppeteers and puppets, though who is which isn’t always clear, I felt this fog throughout, and I marvel over Oyeyemi's achievement. This being Oyeyemi, the puppets are sentient beings à la Pinocchio; and though there’s a character named Gepetta, this is not the Collodi story, except for maybe its matter-of-fact weirdness.
*
Though I hesitate to call any of these stories retellings, there are allusions and nods to other tales: The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse; The Juniper Tree; and more, including those I didn’t recognize, I’m sure. Besides these fairy/folktale motifs, characters also recur in some of the stories. None of them seem important, except to emphasize that it was Oyeyemi’s world I was living in.
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
medium-paced
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
