Tag: Helen Oyeyemi

‘Drownings’ by Helen Oyeyemi

Playful, fantastical and achingly sad, ‘Drownings’ is the story of a land ruled over by a mad tyrant, who drowns so many people that they form a lake of skin and keys, still conscious and lapping away at the shores of the kingdom. Arkady is so poor he can no longer protect his family, comprised of gentle, naïve Giacomo and the clever dog Leporello – and decides to kidnap the tyrant’s daughter, whose own life has been torn apart by the tyrant’s obsession with executing his perceived rivals. Arkady has a bit part in much greater machinations, of which he and the reader are only permitted glimpses. Drownings’ offers glimmers of hope but no easy answers. Oyeyemi has that rare gift of planting wild coincidences into a story with such self-assurance that you believe her entirely.

First published in What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi, Picador, 2016

‘Books and Roses’ by Helen Oyeyemi

I’ll close with the best kind of story, the kind that tangibly changes something in your life. I love Oyeyemi’s magical realism for all sorts of reasons but this story stays with me because it brought me my favorite holiday: St. Jordi Day. The story is not actually about the holiday but the simple description of a lover telling their new partner about this real holiday where Catalonians exchange books and roses on April 23rd inspired me to suggest it to my then-new girlfriend. A decade later, we’re still married and we’ve got a decade’s worth of surprising books to show for the ongoing exchange. What could be better than that?

First published in Granta, 2014. Collected in What is Not Yours is Not Yours, Riverhead Books, 2016. Read it online here

‘Books and Roses’ by Helen Oyeyemi

Once upon a time in Catalonia, our heroine, Montserrat, is found as an infant in a chapel at the feet of a Black Madonna. Oyeyemi is an author whose work I love so much, I almost don’t want to share her. Her books are dizzying, enchanted sleigh-rides through fairytale and folklore that allude to and skilfully dissect the motifs they incorporate. ‘Books and Roses’, as well as the symbols of the title, involves keys, mirrors, secret gardens and the enigmatic architecture of Gaudí’s final residential building, the Casa Mila in Barcelona. 

Extracted in Granta and available to read here, and collected in the excellent What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Picador, 2016

‘if a book is locked there’s probably a good reason for that, don’t you think’ by Helen Oyeyemi

I’m an absolute fiend for the second person. In this story it’s so well utilised because it ties in with how short fiction doesn’t need to atone for or justify its own internal logic, provided that logic holds together for its duration. In this story, the strangeness and unknowableness of the narrative extends not just to us, the reader, but also to its protagonist. If we imagine the space between the page and the reader’s eyes as a kind of proscenium, the second person allows a character to reach out, through and beyond, to create a shared experience. In this story, the shared experience is one of not fully understanding what’s going on. It’s also a really beautiful piece of writing about intimacy and cruelty. 

First published in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Picador, 2016, and anthologised in The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story, ed. Philip Hensher, 2018

‘books and roses’ by Helen Oyeyemi

The most liberated of all contemporary story writers, Helen Oyeyemi does exactly as she pleases, breaking rules and hearts along the way. This twisted story of keys and locks and love and flowers is a pulsating, yearning and utterly captivating narrative that swerves and feints until it arrives at a beautiful, superbly wrought ending.

First published on Granta.com, November 2014, and available to subscribers. Collected in What is not yours is not yours, Picador, 2016

‘Books and Roses’ by Helen Oyeyemi

The stories in Oyeyemi’s 2016 collection are all loosely linked by keys and locks and secrets. This story opens the collection with a baby found in a monastery with a key fastened around her neck. As she grows older, and becomes a heroine figure, she’s suddenly replaced by another. Another heroine, another key. It’s a great example of how short stories, in particular, don’t always go where you expect.

First published in Granta 129: Fate, November 2014, and available to subscribers to read online here. Collected in What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Picador, 2016