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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
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
There’s such a broad range of characters and experiences. A sensation of just being slightly off. The stories were gritty and surprising.
4.5 Helen Oyeyemi is a master wordsmith and her intermingling tales with return characters and a prevailing theme of keys unlocks much wonder, uncanny fascinating magic realism, and many wise observations on relevant topics like ethics, rights, race, identity, love, belonging and sexuality. While others have more traditional fairy tale mores like keeping promises. Some of the stories are 4s but a few, particularly Is Your Blood As Red As This are beyond five.
You told me about how stories come to our aid in times of need. You'd recently been on a flight from Prague, you told me, and the plane had gone through a terrifyingly long tunnel of turbulence up there in the clouds. "Everyone on the plane was freaking out, except the girl beside me," you said. "She was just reading her book--maybe a little bit faster than usual, but otherwise untroubled. I said to her: 'Have you noticed that we might be about to crash?' And she said: 'Yes I did notice that actually, which makes it even more important for me to know how this ends.'"
Immense thanks to the publisher, who sent me an advance copy for an unbiased review!
I really love Helen Oyeyemi, y'all. There was a happy moment when I was eating lunch while reading this, and my cashier waved me over to eagerly ask about the book -- she was an Oyeyemi fan but had no idea she had a new book coming out, so I got to evangelise a little bit.
This is a short, quick read: a dreamy collection of short stories that intertwine with one another and circle, fairytale-like, around common imagery and shared characters. As always with Oyeyemi's lyrical, poetic, literary magical realism, it's fun to note and pick apart her recurring themes. While reading this collection, I kept seeing keys, locks, queerness, letters, found families, intellectual seduction, and courtship via craftsmanship -- in several of the stories, you have people wooing each other via exchanging books, or a girl catches another girl's eye at a party because they both brought books to read. In another, you see seduction via teaching puppetry, literally using surrogates and proxies to stand in for each others' bodies and winning each others' hearts that way. In yet another, there's a Hill House-esque home, all twisting winding doors that won't stay closed unless you lock them. There's the craftmanship of puppets, of art and painting, of repairing clocks. There are tyrants and refugees escaping beleaguered nations. There's the question of when things are locked and why: to keep something in, to keep something out, to lock up a prisoner, to lock up a heart & guard oneself. There's romantic paranoia and the creeping fear of infidelity, or real infidelity itself.
Hers is the sort of matter-of-fact magical realism where one of your narrators can be a puppet, befriending another anthropomorphic puppet, discussing a girl who grew up with a ghost -- and it's all accepted at face value. It's also strangely refreshing to encounter a cast where racial diversity & queerness are just a matter of course, an accepted default. I also really liked that the short stories were linked: characters reappearing in other stories, even if they're tiny cameos, which is one of my favourite techniques in a collection.
I can't give it an unbridled 5 stars, though, because a lot of the stories end rather quickly and abruptly, not really giving much closure -- rather than having much plot, most of the stories are really just explorations of ideas and characters, little moments rather than defining stories. But it's all part of Oyeyemi's disorientingly poetic style. I keep repeating this, but I have to, because she's one of the most literary writers I read. There are even several lapses into second-person, but it's a testament to the quality of Oyeyemi's writing that I barely noticed, and it never felt jarring or irritating (seriously, you have to be so good to pull off second-person!). 4.5 stars really, and I might round up after I've had some time to let it sink in.
Oyeyemi also has a flair for immediately intriguing first lines, like: "Jill Akkerman's husband had been wanting to have a talk with her for weeks, and she was 200 percent sure that it was going to be an unpleasant one."
Or: "As I was saying, I'm an inadequate son."
As others have pointed out, "books and roses" is hands-down the best of the stories -- and also the first one -- a strong start launching into a tale of mysterious orphans, maids and masters, libraries, doomed courtships, and a Gothic sensibility and Spanish setting that strongly reminded me of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's THE SHADOW OF THE WIND (which is one of my favourite books of all time, so... you know). My heart basically climbed into my throat for the romance in this one, both the one set in the past and the conwomen lesbians (WHAT A GOOD).
But honestly, I'm very fond of the rest too. A few notes on specific ones (but not all):
• "sorry" doesn't sweeten her tea: Which deals with violence against women, victim-blaming & rape culture, celebrity apologia, the nature of adolescent fandom, the anxieties of parenthood, the adoring public's tendency to stand up for abusers, and deeply cathartically satisfying vengeance & contrition. Loved this one.
• is your blood as red as this?: All about puppetry! And I just love the format of this story -- where the "YES" section is narrated by a human being (whose blood is, indeed, as red as this), and the "NO" section is narrated by a puppet.
• a brief history of the homely wench society: Very much liked this one too, because it touched on a lot of things I love: rivalries and rivalmance! fraternity and sorority! epistolary humour! sexism and feminism! The ending honestly had me beaming from ear-to-ear and feeling so warm and fuzzy.
• dornicka and the st. martin's day goose: Sadly, my least favourite, maybe partially because the body horror (which I'm normally really cool with) just shook me the wrong way this time and I couldn't see the point in this one as much as the rest. Shades of Red Riding Hood.
• if a book is locked there's probably a good reason for that don't you think: First off, this title is wonderful. Secondly, I think it's a strong ending to the collection too -- all about books and secrets and, again, sexism, this time with slut-shaming and the schoolyard-nature of workplace drama, and locks that should stay locked.
To sum up, it's a short collection but lovely. Normally I need more plot in my fiction, and I can be very harsh on short stories that end inconclusively or feel like a bite-sized sample of a novel rather than standalone tales in their own right -- but for some reason I'm more than fine with it for Oyeyemi. I think it's because her style fits it so well, and you know that concrete plot isn't her focus: instead she drifts in and out of little stories, melding dream-like between them, the lines blurring.
A couple favourite quotes below, which are from the uncorrected ARC, and may differ from the final product:
In those days when anyone spoke to me I became a flustered echo, scrambling up the words they'd said to me and then returning them as fast as I could. Blame it on growing pains, or on the ghost I shared my bedroom with.
***
Everything was just as usual in every room except her bedroom, where, being well versed in horror story search procedures, Myrna looked under her bed last and found Rowan Wayland lying flat on her back, filled with loathing for keys. A key ring gets left in your care and you reject all responsibility for it yet can't bring yourself to throw it away. [...] But with typical slyness the keys had let Rowan in and then been of no assistance whatsoever when it came to getting out.
***
"Hmmm... spring the lock so that the cell kills him," the tyrant ordered as he left. The guards unanimously decided to sleep on this order; it wasn't unheard of for the tyrant to rethink his decisions. The following day the tyrant still hadn't sent word, so the guards decided to sleep on it another night, and another, until they were able to admit to themselves and to each other that they just weren't going to follow orders this time. Their first step toward rebellion, finding out that disobedience didn't immediately bring about the end of the world...
I have never read a book of lightly connected short stories that was so off-beat, yet entertaining.
mysterious
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
3.75 because while reading this book I either loved the stories or didn't liked them or felt boring.
Short-stories I liked:
★ Books and roses
★ Is your blood as red as this?
★ Presence
★ A brief history of the homely wench society
Short-stories I liked:
★ Books and roses
★ Is your blood as red as this?
★ Presence
★ A brief history of the homely wench society
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Not for me. The first story was good, but I need things to be a little more grounded in reality. I did finish because I was at the beach and needed something to read, but I kept wishing I had another book. These stories just were too unbelievable. I should have known better.
Just got really bored and realized I wasn't absorbing anything I read.