The Opposite House

Zusatztext “Complex! challenging! utterly thrilling.” — The Miami Herald “A startling literary prodigy. . . . [Oyeyemi] has the ability to shift between realism and expressionism without surrendering to self-indulgence. . . . Recalls the visionary worlds of Emily Dickinson! Neruda and even Rimbaud.” — The Washington Post Book World “Beautiful! meandering. . . . [A novel] about the difficulties of knowing who you are! especially if you are born of several incompatible cultures.” — The Times (London)“Again displays [Oyeyemi's] amazing sure-handedness that is far beyond her years.” — Seattle Post-Intelligencer Informationen zum Autor Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and has lived in London since the age of four. She completed her first novel The Icarus Girl before her nineteenth birthday. She graduated from Cambridge University in June 2006 and lives in London. The Opposite House is her second novel. Klappentext Lyrical and intensely moving, The Opposite House explores the thin wall between myth and reality through the alternating tales of two young women. Growing up in London, Maja, a singer, always struggled to negotiate her Afro-Cuban background with her physical home. Yemaya is a Santeria emissary who lives in a mysterious somewherehouse with two doors: one opening to London, the other to Lagos. She is troubled by the ease with which her fellow emissaries have disguised themselves behind the personas of saints and by her inability to recognize them. Interweaving these two tales. Helen Oyeyemi, acclaimed author of The Icarus Girl , spins a dazzling tale about faith, identity, and self-discovery.ONE TELLING IT SLANT 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. A somewherehouse is a brittle tower of worn brick and cedar wood, its roof cradled in a net of brushwood. Around it is a hush, the wrong quiet of woods when the birds are afraid. The somewherehouse is four floors tall. The attic is a friendly crawl of linked rooms, aglister with brilliant mirrors propped against walls and window ledges. On the second floor, rooms and rooms and rooms, some so tiny, pale and clean that they are no more than fancies, sugar–cubed afterthoughts stacked behind doorways. Below is a basement pillared with stone. Spiders zigzag their gluey webs all over the chairs. The basement's back wall holds two doors. One door takes Yemaya straight out into London and the ragged hum of a city after dark. The other door opens out onto the striped flag and cooking–smell cheer of that tattered jester, Lagos—always, this door leads to a place that is floridly day. The Kayodes live on the third floor, in three large rooms crisscrossed with melancholic skipping ropes of gauze. All day and all night they mutter, only to one another, and only in Yoruba. The smallest of the Kayodes is a boy with eyes like silver coins. For hair he wears a fuzzy cap of skull–shaped film. He is so old that he walks about on tiptoes, his ragged heels doubtful of bearing his weight unshattered. The second Kayode is asleep most of the time. Her braids are woven into a downy coronet. From the arms of a rocking chair by the furthermost window, the sleeping woman traces out her dreams on vellum. Kayode allows the sheets of paper to skate off her lap and meet the floor as she finishes each drawing; the figures in her dreams are dressed in witch–light. The third Kayode is tall, thickset and bushy–headed; his silhouette cuts the shape of a round–headed meat cleaver. His eyes, black disks cast with a rising glitter, unsettle with a glance. When Yemaya, or Aya, came to the somewherehouse, her battered trunk full of beads and clothes came too. Her bottleful of vanilla essence was w...

Product details

• Authors: Helen Oyeyemi
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 10.06.2008
• EAN: 9781400078769
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-7876-9
• No. of pages: 272
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 14 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy