A review by sam_bizar_wilcox
Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

4.0

I have a soft spot for Oyeyemi. While her best work is still her short fiction, Peaces is probably the most successful of her novels. This is largely because the conceit - travel aboard a train - adds an element of structure that her plotting often lacks when splayed out over the course of a longer narrative. What one would come to expect from Oyeyemi - elements of magical realism, playful uses of language, and surprising twists - abound here. And though the characters lack a certain depth and the movements within the plot are not always handled as deftly as one would like, the experience of this train-journey, scored by theremin music and lined with mysteries, is like a fever-dream. In rendering the reader in such a semi-conscious state, and walking them through the cars and characters involved, Oyeyemi succeeds with aplomb.