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lncvach13 's review for:
What is Not Yours is Not Yours
by Helen Oyeyemi
After reading Icarus Girl, this was a letdown.
I didn't get it! I wanted to get it so badly, and I felt like I was always right on the edge of about to get it, but could never fall.
Let me start somewhere coherent:
This is a book of beautifully written short stories. Each story offers the reader some kind of magical realism. However, unlike the magical realism offered by the likes of Neil Gaiman, in Oyeyemi's book of stories, we readers can never be sure of what we are reading. In the blink of an eye, a character transforms from boy to girl to puppet to wolf to a wolf's animated carcass. Each character is a chimera, disrupting our readerly expectations at every turn. Additionally, for readers who love stories featuring queer characters, this book is full of stories with characters who are not only not hetero, but exist in the luminal spaces of life and not life.
While I enjoyed this play between the text and the reader, the stories never came full circle for me. I never felt released from the climax of the plot. This book is a beatific piece of art that went completely over my head, a roller coaster with a lackluster ending, even though I enjoyed the ride the whole way.
I didn't get it! I wanted to get it so badly, and I felt like I was always right on the edge of about to get it, but could never fall.
Let me start somewhere coherent:
This is a book of beautifully written short stories. Each story offers the reader some kind of magical realism. However, unlike the magical realism offered by the likes of Neil Gaiman, in Oyeyemi's book of stories, we readers can never be sure of what we are reading. In the blink of an eye, a character transforms from boy to girl to puppet to wolf to a wolf's animated carcass. Each character is a chimera, disrupting our readerly expectations at every turn. Additionally, for readers who love stories featuring queer characters, this book is full of stories with characters who are not only not hetero, but exist in the luminal spaces of life and not life.
While I enjoyed this play between the text and the reader, the stories never came full circle for me. I never felt released from the climax of the plot. This book is a beatific piece of art that went completely over my head, a roller coaster with a lackluster ending, even though I enjoyed the ride the whole way.