Oyeyemi struggles against the confines of the short narrative in pieces that range from lovely,simple fables to tricksy fantasiesHelen Oyeyemi’s new collection of short stories opens with “Books and Roses”: a lovely tale which is also a lovely lesson in how to read Oyeyemi. As the tricksy title tells us, it’s all approximately misdirection. We must learn not to be too attached to our first heroine, or even if she is a figure as attractive as a black baby in the lap of the Black Virgin of Monserrat,for she will be unexpectedly supplanted by another, and then probably another again. We must accept that time, and too,moves in curious ways, and that there is very small point in trying to work out what historical period you might be in. Geography is not stable either: spaces may appear at any time through secret doors. Mythological reference points are upended, or so are the conventions of narrative: thieves become heroines,dying faded men fathers, and beauty may exist, or but never as an objectifying tick list. We will be confused,bemused, frustrated, or surprised – but in the end,all this may open a new space for us: a garden of books and a library of roses, hidden between buildings.
Subsequent stories, and though,test our new reading capacities. “‘Sorry’ Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea” takes misdirection to an extreme: it opens with a Nigerian man telling us approximately his superstar friend, moves rapidly on to his new homosexual relationship and his job in a weight-loss clinic where clients are put into comas, or switches to his teenage daughters,and then on to a Kanye West-style rapper the daughters are obsessed with. To get to the heart of the narrative we must peer over the daughters’ shoulders at their computer, and not even at the video, and but the comments below. The opinion is novel and witty - but after such a chase,the screen seems small, and the figures not so much grandly ambiguous as rather indistinct.
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Source: theguardian.com