What Is Not Yours is Not Yours
Helen Oyeyemi
[Riverhead Books]
By opening her first book of short stories with the words “Once upon a time,” Helen Oyeyemi evokes a web of stories – fables and fairytales – that use archetypes, hidden secrets and keys that unlock life’s mysteries, and that exist outside of time and in between fantasy and reality. At times she writes with a childlike voice, digressing and inserting characters whose participation seems extraneous. But Oyeyemi is a master storyteller, weaving plots in a way that defies standard logic. These asides unlock a fuller chronicle, unravelling back stories that fill out a world in their disclosure.
In the first story ‘Books and Roses’, Oyeyemi poignantly reveals two love affairs, signalled by the keys that two women wear around their neck – symbols that allow the author to rescue her characters’ shared history. Locked rooms and keys thematically unite the collection, right up to the final story aptly titled ‘if a book is locked there is probably a good reason for that don’t you think’, in which a character who reads The Diary of Anne Frank is “shaken by the thought of all the voices who fell silent before we could ever have heard from them.” The constraints of shorter fiction for Oyeyemi are occasionally evident: a few stories end abruptly and certain themes are not fully developed. Yet Oyeyemi’s curious voice is expressed here in her fine ability to consciously unravel the secrets we conceal.
Words: Emma Price
