What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi | Book Review

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is a collection of nine short stories, four of which have been published previously in various journals. It begins with Books and Roses then continues with Sorry Doesn't Sweeten her Tea, Is Your Blood as Red as This?, Drownings, Presence, A Brief History of the Homely Wench Society, Darnicka and the St. Martin's Day Goose, Freddy Barrandov Checks...in?, and ends with If a Book is Locked There's Probably a Good Reason for That Don't You Think? Of the lot I liked the second, seventh, and ninth stories with the ninth one being my favorite.

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is the fourth Oyeyemi title I've read out of the six she has published so far (I'm not counting the book of plays) and I still have the same problems that I always have when I read an Oyeyemi novel. I have a problem connecting with her stories... It's not because her main characters are sometimes caucasian as opposed to being Nigerian or having an African ancestry. I grew up devouring stories about caucasian characters in novels written by caucasian authors just like every other Nigerian in my generation so I can connect to anyone regardless of race, that's not a problem. Oyeyemi has a penchant for penning mystical stories or stories with fairytale-y roots and while that's not my thing in this phase of my life, I still expect to enjoy these stories or at least appreciate them but most of the time I do not. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours was a struggle to read and I was glad when I was away from the book even though I was on a tight reading schedule in the first quarter of 2016. When I finally finished it, I still got the "I finished this story but I don't know exactly what I read" feeling that comes often when I read an Oyeyemi title.

January 30th, 2004 edition of The Guardian

I purchased White Is for Witching via Amazon in April 2013 and I still can't get past the first few pages. I've thumbed through White Is for Witching many times over the past three years just to see if it gets better somewhere (usually that encourages me to give the book another shot) but that hasn't worked. Every now and then I search for Mr. Fox on Amazon and preview it using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature but I can tell it's not good for me so I never buy it. I don't know... Maybe Oyeyemi's books are not for me. I don't want to keep battling through her novels only to arrive at the other end to write a review saying how much I don't like it. That's a waste of my time and yours. Especially here in America where there are millions of novels, sitting in gorgeous, air-conditioned buildings that are too nice to house only books, begging to be read. I have decided that I'm going step back for a while and when I'm ready I'll be much more thorough before I select and purchase another another Oyeyemi book. Someone somewhere is going to call me a hater but I'm not a hater. I really want to connect to Oyeyemi's stories. There are only three Nigerian authors whose interviews/features I have cut out of newspapers and Oyeyemi is one of them. I even brought the 2004 newspaper clipping with me when I moved to America in 2009. Above is a photo of my newspaper clipping along with my copy of this novel. It's from the January 30th, 2004 edition of Nigeria's The Guardian. I clearly did a lot of highlighting lol. I have posted this photo to show I'm not some hater. This review is just me trying to be honest about an author I care about and someone whose career I have followed for quite some time.

Helen Oyeyemi is amazing. It's something I've always admitted. It's something that's unquestionable. Half the time when I read her books I'm wondering how she makes all of this stuff up. She's impressive. I'll wait. I'll try to not just buy another novel because it's an Oyeyemi book. The future will bring me an Oyeyemi offering that will excite me just as much or even more than The Icarus Girl did in 2008. I know it will.
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READ: 
The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi - My Thoughts 
The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi - My Thoughts
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi - My Thoughts

[Image via Amazon]

Helen Oyeyemi Will Read in Houston, Texas!

Helen Oyeyemi will be in Houston, Texas on March 28th! She's one of the two authors featured this month in The Inprint Margarett Root Brown Reading Series, one of the best and most popular author series in the U.S.A. The other featured author is Mat Johnson, author of the novel Loving Day. Oyeyemi's new book What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours was released in America yesterday by Riverhead Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House) and my copy arrived yesterday thanks to Amazon's amazing & very reliable "release-date delivery" service. I will post my review of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours as soon as I'm done reading it.

If you would like to see Helen Oyeyemi read from What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours you can purchase your tickets from Inprint Houston. Visit Inprint Houston's website and Facebook page for more information about this event.

READ:
The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi - My Thoughts
The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi - My Thoughts
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi - My Thoughts

[Author image via Green Apple Books]

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi | Book Review

Boy Novak is a caucasian girl living with her abusive father in Manhattan, New York. She finds the courage to run away from home then she starts life afresh in Flax Hill, New England. There she meets Arturo Whitman, a widower and an unlikely love interest at first, marries him and becomes stepmother to his gorgeous little daughter, Snow. Snow's blonde haired, hazel eyed, and gorgeous. An "extraordinary-looking kid" who's the pride of the Whitman and Miller families. The Whitmans and the Millers are concealing a secret that is revealed later on when Boy gives birth to her daughter, Bird.

When I found out on the first page of the novel that the protagonist, Boy, is caucasian I raised my eyebrows and wondered what direction Oyeyemi would take this. I've read novels by authors who write as the opposite gender in first person but I hadn't read a novel in which the author was writing in first person as a different race and I was curious as to how she was going to accomplish this. Oyeyemi's story does not mention or evoke Nigeria in any way and that's fine by me. In the Guardian article Stop Pigeonholing African Writers which made its rounds on the internet last month, Taiye Selasi talks about the need for our authors to have the freedom to do whatever they please artistically. It's a great piece and I agree with her completely. I like Boy, Snow, Bird much more than The Opposite House (the last Oyeyemi book I read) but I don't think it's more intriguing than The Icarus Girl. Boy, Snow Bird is remarkable. Helen Oyeyemi's imagination and talent know no bounds.
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READ:
The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi - My Thoughts
The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi - My Thoughts

[Image via Amazon]

The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi | Book Review

Writing a second novel after the huge success of the first must be a little scary. There’s definitely enormous pressure to deliver a second time. Helen Oyeyemi’s second book The Opposite House, published two years after her critically acclaimed and successful debut novel The Icarus Girl, seems to be one of those books written either in a hurry or under pressure.

“Sometimes a child with wise eyes is born.
Then some people will call that child an old soul.
That is enough to make God laugh. For instance there is Yemaya Saramagua, who lives in the somewherehouse.”

Those are the first four sentences in The Opposite House. It tells the story of Maja, a 24-year-old girl who has lived in London since she was five. She’s a mediocre singer about to graduate from college. She hides the early stages of her pregnancy from her devoted boyfriend Aaron, and refuses to marry him for some reason that translates into – I’m not ready for marriage just yet. She and her gay friend Amy Eleni, a Cypriot, who seems to have the same hysteric problem Maja does, bond tightly despite the usual ups and downs of friendship.

Her parents are black Cubans who have fled their country because of the turmoil created by leaders they had faith in. Maja yearns to visit what she calls “my Cuba”, to explore this fatherland that she has been thinking about for a very long time and buys plane tickets before telling her father. He refuses to give his consent because he’s disappointed and saddened by the events that are occurring in their homeland. He tells Maja that the reason they are not living in Cuba is because: “…it’s not safe…staying there is accepting the lies of a regime that in its aimlessness will destroy the country.” He has shifted base to London because he wants his family to be free, to be under a government that does not affect whether or not they can eat what they want to eat, see films they want to see and read what they want to read. "I brought you here so you don't have to live in a place where politics can actually bust your door down, or make you disappear..." He suspects that his parents and in-laws have have roots in Abeokuta, Nigeria. His wife's religion is a blend of Catholicism and old traditional customs, that he finds irritating and tries hard to tolerate.

In the book, Maja does a lot of thinking about her roots. There’s a part in the novel where a Nigerian kid in her class holds a special assembly of friends on the independence day of her country and passes around Nigerian snacks. Amy and Maja are irritated by this action and Amy asks out loud:

“Can I just ask you what you think of this idea: if your parents taught you to be so proud of Nigeria, how come they’re over here?” The embarrassed child stammers and fiddles with her tie and dye head wrap. Later on, Amy wrote:

“You know what, if you want to talk about your country, if you want to be serious about it, fine. But you don’t need to pretend that you love the place. People need to stop using love of some country that they don’t live in as an excuse for their inability to shut up about it.”

That portion of the novel will ring in the head of immigrants long after they drop the book. The Opposite House still contains themes that Oyeyemi explored in The Icarus girl (you can find my thoughts on it here). Did I envisage that? No. Did I find that disappointing? Yes. It would have been more refreshing for her to steer clear of those themes, at least for her second book.

I hate to say this but I must. The Opposite House is the worst book I’ve read in a while. My mind kept screaming for me to put it down. It goes this way and then it goes that way. It’s a struggle to read this book. The only reason I ploughed through this book was for the purpose of this review. I forced myself to read lines that my brain repelled. This is no book for “light reading”. This is one of those books a lot of people will pick up then drop, then pick up again, and then fight through the prose in the hope of finding a more engaging center. The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi is one of those books you read and never recommend to someone else. Oyeyemi possesses incredible talent, make no mistake about that, however The Opposite House is a dreadful book.

[Image via FantasticFiction.co.uk]

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi - My Thoughts

Amazing, beautiful and unpredictable! This tale of a young girl with split personality is embroidered artfully and brought home with ancient Yoruba beliefs about twins and the mystery surrounding the surviving twin. For a debut novel, I'm impressed. Helen is a writer to be watched. She went back to her ethnic roots and tailored her native beliefs to this tale, making her story more beguiling, more Nigerian.