The Opposite House
by Helen Oyeyemi
(Bloomsbury)
Helen Oyeyemi is without doubt a very intelligent writer. Comparisons to Ben Okri, Chinua Achebe and others are not empty literary plaudits. Aptly for a writer tastefully compared with giants such as these, Oyeyemi takes risks.
The latest of these is The Opposite House, about Maja Carrera, a pregnant woman from a Cuban black family who finds herself in London running away from Fidel Castro’s Cuba after her father realises that “Castro’s revolution was not his”.
One story is about exile: there is a moment in which we catch Maja wondering if “there’s an age beyond which it is impossible to lift a child from the pervading marinade of an original country”.
Separate tales, if we dare call them that, are the vignettes of a Santeria priestess, Yemaya, who lives in a “somewherehouse” whose “basement back walls holds two doors”, one straight into London and another into Lagos.
This metaphor of multiculturalism is supposed to prop up the larger theme of Orisha and other Yoruba gods and the many supplicants who survived the slave boat to find themselves in strange surroundings. What follows is dense, impenetrable, poetic prose the purpose of which is not at once clear and which does precious little to consolidate the narrative.
Mercifully, Oyeyemi spares us from drudgery as the main narrative is actually an engaging piece of work. It interrogates the meaning of Ogun, Ochun and other gods that found themselves in exile in the presence of a monotheistic and jealous Roman Catholic God. Are these gods just “historical artefacts” or do they have significance in the life of its supplicants?
“These gods … these beliefs don’t transcend time and space; they stretch them unnecessarily, stretch the geography of the world like an elastic band. And you can’t do that. You can’t erase borders and stride over Spanish into Yoruba like that. You can only pretend that you have,” Maja’s father argues.
Not only gods have been exiled. The novel succeeds in drawing up exile as a state of mind and examines it almost as an existential state of being. Maja’s father speaks of not being in love with his country, in fact belonging above the Earth or even below it.
Another strand is that of the “personal hysteric”: Maja’s sense of being out at sea and negotiating her way to ground is a condition raised to the level of mystique. For instance, she tells herself: “I can’t be a wife yet, not even Aaron’s. I need to sit down and have a good long talk with my personal hysteric before I become a wife.”
After reading the book, which follows Oyemi’s acclaimed debut, The Icarus Girl, I felt a gnawing sense of disappointment. The Opposite House feels incomplete and merely hints at great themes that a more disciplined writer — shorn of self-exhibitionism and literary brinkmanship — could have turned into a gem.