A review by bookish_arcadia
Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi

3.0

I love all the parts of this novel. The surrealism. The magical realism. The ornate train passing through unidentifiable destinations, full of bizarrely themed compartments. The semi-sentient mongooses and absurd, coincidental meetings. It’s a list of reasons to love Peaces. But I didn’t. I think the problem is the characters, Otto and Xavier the non-honeymooning honeymooners, Ava, Allegra, and Laura, the residents of the train on a quest to prove Ava’s sanity. The endlessly mysterious Prem who links them all. They’re all rather two-dimensional, pawns to the plot and setting that fail to capture the attention. The theme of visibility, of being seen or unseen by others runs through it but the thread leads nowhere, tangling and spiralling in a way that becomes dull and repetitive because the characters with the capacity to see or be seen have no purchase on the reader’s attention of feelings. The writing, as ever, is glittering and acrobatic but just wasn’t enough. I’m struck that the story could have beenba brilliant short story, or a novella, but they're just isn't enough substance for 250+ pages