creekhiker 's review for:

What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi

4.0

---

This is a gorgeous book of short stories. Oyeyemi fully embraces the scope of fiction, moving freely into fantasy and then back into normal life, and then back again. It seems to me to be magic realism in the school of Gunter Grass, and like Grass, Oyeyemi is intellectually rigorous in her writing, demanding that her readers keep up. I had previously tried to read her novel, Mr. Fox, but could not get into it. I think the intellectual approach that annoyed me in the novel form is a perfect fit for the short story. If any of these stories were any longer, I would have likely gotten tired of her characters, which all verge on the edge of precious, and the plots would have crumbled. But her prose is a perfect fit in the constraint and perfectionism of the short story style.