The Opposite House [Paperback]

The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi is a somewhat complex novel that focuses on the antics of Maja Carrerra, a Cuban-born Londoner, who is pregnant by her white Ghanaian boyfriend and "the opposite house" where a Santerian goddess, Aya Saramagua, ventures out to find her roots amid a prevalent `ache/longing' that seems to permeate her world.

Maja's world is filled with drama. Her parents, both highly educated academics, are exiles from Castro's Cuba who embrace London as a place for second chances, but cling to their Spanish and African roots. Her young mother is highly religious and blends Catholicism with Santeria (an African-Cuban religion), while her elderly father is seemingly an atheist. Thus, there is no surprise when her parents clash over religion and their disagreement lasts through the majority of the book. Her best friend, Amy Eleni, is a white lesbian who faces challenges dealing with her sexuality. Maja also deals with her unplanned pregnancy, her burgeoning singing career, her bohemian, film-maker boyfriend and a younger brother who is struggling to come of age as a black man in a Westernized London.

Oyeyemi writes angst into Maja's character with a longing for Cuba and her ancestors there. There was an attempt to draw parallels between the London-based Maja and the Lagos-based Aya; the Amy in Maja's world and an Ami in Aya's world -- but the symbolisms and allegories were quickly lost with this reader. It got to a point (midway in the novel) where I felt I needed to reread passages for clarity and understanding, but at that point, I could really care less about the characters and persevered through the narrative just to get through the story.

Honestly, if this were not a review book, I doubt if I would have had the interest and patience to finish the book. The author's writing style requires great patience on the reader's part and I found myself growing weary with the scene changes and the transitions from "reality" to the mystical "opposite" world where the story is carried in lyrical, symbolic prose (that I struggled to decipher). Initially, I was interested in Maja's world, but it quickly waned about a quarter into the book when the plot seemed to fizzle. I also really tried to connect with Aya's story, but failed miserably. The other characters (save Amy Eleni) offered nothing solid to support the plot or move the story forward. At the end of the novel, I felt no closure and was scratching my head and wondering what I had just read.

This was my first read with the author. I heard and read the rave reviews about her debut, The Icarus Girl, but never got a chance to read it. When I read the premise behind this novel, I was excited and so very much wanted to enjoy it; however, I was somewhat disappointed with the book as a whole. On a positive note, the author was successful in covering the cross-cultural aspects and I gave her credit for creativity and educating the reader about challenges of immigrants and differing views on the African Diaspora; thus the "3" rating. I am willing to read her debut and hope it will prove to be a better read for me.

Reviewed by Phyllis
APOOO BookClub

I'm faintly surprised that I managed to finish The Opposite House. A strange little book that I came by via the Writers on Writing podcast and I was impressed by the author's poetic turn of phrase and her youth (she's about 24 I think). I don't know quite how to explain or describe this book. It's an experience, not a journey. It doesn't always make sense, and in fact usually doesn't. I'm not sure it is supposed to. It starts somewhere, then goes nowhere but in a peaceful way. It's overblown, but incredibly subdued and small. It's a study in contrasts, I guess. I stated last week that I wasn't sure if it was incredibly brilliant and not able to be understood by the mortal mind, or if it was utter crap and we just think it is brilliant because we don't understand it. What is certain is that Helen Oyeyemi has a poets mind and some of her phrases are amazing enough to make me want to weep at her gift. This is "high literature" at a peak and I don't think I'd rush to read anything by Oyeyemi again, however this one will live on in my mind for quite a while methinks.

From The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi:

"I need my Cuba memory back, or something just as small, just as rich, to replace it, more food for my son, for me. I think I will pretend that I am not from Cuba and neither is my son. The boy and I started a race from that other country, and I got here first."

The Opposite House reads like a book written by the love child of Virginia Woolf and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, assuming either had been from Cuba. It's a story filled with yearning for a native country, or for the memory of a native country, despite the fact the main character, Maja Carmen Carrera, only has one memory left of her childhood. Twenty years later she's pregnant with her boyfriend Aaron's baby, and living in London. Still, that one memory goes along with her, haunting her dreams.

The book is shot through with so much internal conflict the pain is often palpable, and sometimes raw. An African Cuban, she doesn't feel she fully belongs in either the world with her memory of Cuba or in an England that doesn't completely feel like home, either:

"I was seven years old when we came here. I've come to think that there's an age beyond which it is impossible to lift a child from the pervading marinade of an original country, pat them down with a paper napkin and then deep-fry them in another country, another language like hot oil scalding the first language away. I arrived here just before that age."

It's the lushness of the language, though, that's the dominating factor in what makes this such a wonderful book. The sensuous language is woven throughout:

"The day was hot but gentle; beneath its healing steam lay granite, decrepit wood, rocks gloved in blanched sand. The harbour water caught sunlight in layered hoops of petrol-coloured dirt and tried to keep its clarity secret, but the divers told. Small, earth-brown boys kept bobbing up, their backbones hacking out of their skin, hair plastered to their heads, coin pouches around their waists rattling as they added new handfuls of slick bronze to their store."

The Opposite House is told in alternating narrative, flashing between Maja's story and the fantastical, alternate reality of a girl named Yemaya, whose connection with Maja really is never completely spelled out. Rather, it's a more spiritual connection, a reaching across the dimensions between two souls who don't feel fully at home, or at ease, and whose searchings lead them almost to each other, in a sort of alternate reality that lies between them. It has a lot to do with feeling alien, never able to feel you fit into a culture, but not able to go back, either, because that door has closed. It's this door, between the two worlds, that seems to be Oyeyemi's target, this ethereal, intangible "door" that won't open for either Maja or Yemaya, and it's this reality that frustrates the both of them. Yet, neither can forget the past, and they carry the weight of it with them while trying to make their lives elsewhere. They are a part of several cultures but don't completely belong to any one:

"I strip to my underwear and I study myself in the mirror; it is a bronzed sorrel woman with a net of curly hair who looks back, and she does not look Jamaican or Ghanian or Kenyan or Sudanese - the only firm thing that is sure is that she is black. Mami says only Cubans look like Cubans; put three Cuban girls together - white, black, Latina, whatever - and you just see it."

Ultimately, both women are strong. They are survivors. Despite their feelings of disconnection, they carve out lives for themselves in an adopted land that at the least is rich in opportunity and the potential for making a good life. And it's through the beauty of Oyeyemi's prose that the reader is able to explore not just the complexity of Maja and Yemaya, but also the tenuous link that binds them to each other. And the result is a gorgeous book, rich in luxuriant prose that's a treat to read.

"She fled to be born. She fled to be native, to start somewhere, to grow in that same somewhere, to die there. She didn't know just then that she wasn't quickening toward home, but trusting home to find her."

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