Faber Faber Parasol against the Axe.

by Helen Oyeyemi

The new novel from the Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author Helen Oyeyemi.

Oyeyemi treats you to a kaleidoscopic weekend in Prague, as dazzling as it is effortlessly unique. Get lost in the story like you would an unfamiliar city and let it reward you with moments of philosophical clarity, wheelbarrow rides, raw emotion and raw onions.

This novel is a holiday, an adventure, a marvel and a guide. It is a story about the lies behind the lies we tell and a city as a living thing, sustained by the lives of its inhabitants. Suffused with warmth and joy, Parasol Against the Axe is a love letter to Prague, and to the art of storytelling.

Genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Fantasy, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Books About Books, Audiobook

272 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2024

About the author

Helen Oyeyemi is a British novelist. She lives in Prague, and has written eleven books so far, none of which involve ‘magical realism’. Can’t fiction sometimes get extra fictional without being called such names…?

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oyeyemi is the absolute queen of “wtf did I just read” but in the best way possible.
And this might be their best book.
Review to come.

[Mel · Rating 1 out of 5]

**I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley.**

Since I get the feeling a lot of reviews for this book are going to start off with "What did I just read??!" let me skip the suspense and say what it is I just read: every idea Oyeyemi has had of late, slapped together, and varnished hastily with the overarching idea of lies and perception and self-perception. Oh, erm, uh, and Prague!! This is not a novel, this is not even the outline of a novel. This is just a bunch of novel ideas sutured together. Some may choose to call this books layered inside books, storytelling about storytelling, but frankly taking that stance excuses the complete lack of effort that went into making anything coherent of this mess. If I were feeling more generous I would say that maybe this was a short story collection that got squashed into the shape of a novel, but very few of the separate stories in here feel finished enough to even warrant "short story" status. Oh, to be sure they all have their pathos, their "ah, another example of what it means to be human in this particular place!" But by the second time you get a story within the story (which itself has another story embedded in it) there is no more chance of this resonating. Because the takeaway of the initial reader of these stories (or of the second reader if you want to embrace the inherent meta of this concept - which I don't) is not to consider what this implies about stories or about people or even about Prague. The takeaway of Hero and Thea is just basically, "Huh! Weird! Guess I'll go out on the street and now let some weird things happen directly to me."

Yeah, people who like quirk about all else are going to adore this one. A LOT of weirdness purely for the sake of being weird. No, sorry. A lot of weirdness purely for the sake of writing ornate, beautifully crafted sentences about weirdness. On that note: there is nothing negative that can be said about this book on the sentence level. It's gorgeous. There are a lot of stunning descriptions. But ultimately it makes the complete lack of effort on every other element so much more galling. This is someone who knew what they were doing - they just didn't want to fully do it.

Because everything here feels a bit like a tangent, an idea Oyeyemi wanted to throw out raw rather than allow it to marinate. This is true even, and perhaps especially, in the points the reader might consider central to the story: the parts dealing directly with Hero and Thea. So many asides! None of them adding up to anything! Okay, real quick, here's how Thea feels about being with a woman a lot younger than her and how she would've felt about herself at that age. (No worries, we're not actually going to develop the character of the other woman or anything! Just a sprinkling of detail to make you think there was a person there, rather than just a thinkpiece the author wanted to write.) Okay, real quick, let's do a title drop and allude vaguely to what you might have assumed was going to be the fulcrum of the text: in friendship one person is a parasol and the other is the axe but they're actually each other and the same thing, isn't that wacky? Now onto another story within a story within a story!

I guess there should be points awarded for consistency though, because all this - the tangential detail, all scattershot and adding up to nothing - applies to the main characters too. Well, you know, I say characters. Hero and Thea are mainly just vehicles to fire off asides, with the occasional bit of deeply horrific backstory just...left there. Hero's parents, for example, are brother and sister. Yeah. And her father-uncle is a priest. So, you know. Bit to unpack there. But leave it in the suitcase we shall because that NEVER GETS BROUGHT UP AGAIN. The "love story" (gag) gets trotted out, left there, and then...poof. Nothing. But you know, that would've taken effort. To actually examine the ramifications of all that.

And this is one example of many. The climactic act of the book is itself centered on some (again, horrific and dark) backstory we only hear about in this one scene and again, poof! Time to have the personifications of Prague waltz in! But what about - no, no, shhh. It's time for more whimsy.

So, yeah, if I was hoping for a look at destructive friendships and the pull between old friends (which I was, because I read the blurb) I really played myself there. Ditto anything meaningfully said about Prague. That's what I honestly stuck it out for: I wanted to feel the city again. I wanted to remember what it was like to live there and love it, but damn. There's nothing here that brought me back to the sensory experience of being here; nothing about the day-to-day living experience of it. Just...nothing. Some mention of the skyline, the pretty buildings, and that's it. The wacky personifications got way more air time than the actual place: but that's this book all over.

I know there'll be people who'll adore this book, people who are probably way more meta-invested than me. That's great. But anyone else - people who like a little there there - should probably save themselves the time and hassle I stupidly put myself through. The sterling sentences are not worth the rest of it, and I would absolutely not recommend it.

[emma]

actually i DON'T judge books by their covers.

because i literally hate this one but i still want to read this book.

[Sage Parsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parasol Against the Axe is an absurdist stream of consciousness novel written from the perspective of an anthropomorphic Prague. Following two ex-friends and a book with an ever changing first chapter, Prague inspects its own painful and human (un)history. A brilliant exploration of place and self that is both strikingly witty and sharply sober.

There were a couple vignettes in this book that reflected on the impact of war and totalitarianism on Prague and it’s residents that cut especially close and true. Specifically the chapter about the Taxi Dancers… whew.

Also an incredibly queer story, both explicitly and implicitly. Which is always a good surprise when I’m not expecting it.

Thank you to PRH for providing me with an ARC.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

"And those are only the things you're aware of", Wendell said, as he got stuck into his second pint. "I've found that once I've done my housekeeping in those areas, the stuff I didn't allow myself to notice I was doing circles back around and then: well chaos again. You almost don't want to bother tidying up in the first place."


(the book as rendered by Microsoft's Image Generator)

It seems surprising that this is the first time Oyeyemi has set a novel in her now home-town of Prague, given the fabulist nature of both her writing and the legends of the city, but she explains why she has now, in this interview in the Guardian.

Being a writer isn’t my whole personality: when I packed up all my things and moved here, it was just where I wanted to live – as Helen, not as a writer, and not even really as a reader. But then I was given Magic Prague, a book by [Angelo Maria] Ripellino, this long, wonderful love letter to the city. Reading about the surrealists Breton and Apollinaire visiting the street next to mine, I saw I wasn’t an anomaly: a lot of people have become irrationally entwined with Prague out of the blue. Then when I read Vítězslav Nezval’s poems about the city, I knew I had to add to this body of work about Prague. But trying to persuade Prague to be written about wasn’t easy.

John Banville described Magic Prague, in David Newton Marinelli's translation, as a haunting, clotted, mad masterpiece. It is not an easy read, but it is a rewarding one. As I close the book, the magic city sinks back into its ancient dreaming, as quoted in this later Guardian piece which itself concludes by noting how Magic Prague gathers such divergent sources into haphazard dialogue with one another.

And those comments would suffice as a review for this novel, one stuffed with ideas and references, and which presents the, at times overwhelmed, reader with a surfeit of plot and character. It's a heady mix but I struggled to engage as much about the characters' situation as they did (an issue I also found with Oyeyemi's Gingerbread) and if there is depth to the references, erudite as they are it passed me by.

That last point would start with the novel's title - explained with a throwaway line about the two protagonists: Now, if Hero Tojosoa was an axe, then Dorothea Gilmartin was a parasol. Really both were both, of course, but you try telling them that., or indeed the narrative device in the opening pages, that the novel is actually narrated by Prague the City (which for the bulk of the novel then seems irrelevant). Or why we have one character who pushes people around in a wheelbarrow and another who dresses up as, or perhaps even is, the cartoon mole Krtek.

Literary references abound, including Borges' The Secret Miracle and Prince Florizel of Bohemia from Chesterton's The Suicide Club.

The literary origins of the name of Dorothea Gilmartin - first adopted by Hero as a pseudonym for her writing, and coincidentally, and before the two met, taken by Thea as an alias - are particularly intriguing. The Dorothea from Middlemarch but rather more interestingly, the Gilmartin from the 19th century novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (subtitled 'Written by Himself: With a detail of curious traditionary facts and other evidence by the editor') and the character Gil-martin (itself possibly from the Gaelic Gille-Martainn, or fox), a devil like character who is able to transform his appearance at will, [and ] soon directs all of Robert’s pre-existing tendencies and beliefs to evil purposes, convincing him that it is his mission to “cut sinners off with the sword”, and that murder can be the correct course of action (from Wikipedia).

Which is all fascinating to dig into to but largely rather a so-what as far as the strict confines of this novel is concerned. Indeed Oyeyemi's writing gives a distinct, and one suspects deliberate, impression that there are multiple other stories and novels behind this one, explicitly so in the case of the novel-within-the-novel, the ever-changing Paradoxical Undressing, whose epigraph in one of its many editions comes from Northanger Abbey:

Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?


a Microsoft Image Generator rendition of Paradoxical Undressing* in the Klementine Library (from Borges story) - the * as the AI refused to render this with the 'undressing' word, which is strangely appropriate for one of the novel's many plot-lines.

A reluctant 3.5 stars as the ideas don't quite click for me but I'm glad to have read the novel and glad that we have Oyeyemi to up-end our conceptiion of what a novel should contain - as Ali Smith, one of the judges put it, when describing why Oyeyemi's previous novel was selected for the Goldsmiths Prize - "In a blast of visionary life and energy, and with a kind of jovial panache that casually analyses narrative while simultaneously shaking itself free of all preconceived expectations of narrative".

[this_eel · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s bonkers, mate

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book made me think of Masters of Death in the sense that reading it felt a lot like watching a bunch of squirrels squabbling except here there wasn't even mounting angst, just an increasing sense of pointlessness. I'm not sure why I even finished the book because the writing wasn't pretty enough to make up for the lack of a plot. The cover is still awesome though.

[Ilya · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book did not work for me. I found myself detached from the characters and the plot. There is a bunch of ideas here and none of them were fully developed. An idea about a book inside a book sounded good initially but unfortunately it doesn't go anywhere. The stories inside a book called "Paradoxical Undressing" change depending on who's reading it but I didn't find any of the stories interesting and I don't understand why they had to be included in this novel. There is a hint of magical realism here and usually I'm there for it, but not in this book. Overall, I found this book messy and full of different ideas which were not fully explored.

[Asia J]

i will not rate this book because helen is my #1 and i will never speak ill of her but on the other hand….girl what the hell was that

(very disorienting and not in a good way! the idea for the plot was incredibly interesting but not executed well at all, in my opinion)

[Maia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helen Oyeyemi continues to baffle and dazzle me. This one is set in and narrated by Prague, which is a tricky city full of its own complicated whims and desires. Into this self-aware city enter several women: Sofie and Polly, an engaged couple, celebrating their bachlorette weekend together with friends. Hero, a somewhat estranged friend of Sofie's, who come to Prague mostly to avoid a piece of registered mail which is chasing her down. And Thea, a woman willing to commit violence for the right price, on a hired revenge mission that happens to intersect with a dark episode of Sofie and Hero's past. Does that sound straight forward? It isn't. Oh yes and there's also a book, Paradoxical Undressings which tells a different story to every person who cracks open its covers. This book allows Oyeyemi to tell many nested and fantastical anecdotes from Prague's Communist past. As with most Oyeyemi books, there are a few threads I was left scratching my head over, but I had such a good time on the ride that I don't mind. I'll just have to read it again and see if I catch them (assuming it's the same book when I open it a second time!)

[Caroline Hirko · Rating 2 out of 5]

better than a poke in the eye

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book defies description. A bachelorette party descends on Prague, old tensions resurface, and a book grips its readers with its ever-changing plot.

Whenever Hero Tojosoa opens up her copy of Paradoxical Undressing, recommended to her by her son, the book tells a completely different tale populated by different people in a unique timeline. When her former friend Thea opens the same book, she too finds it changed. Is the tale influenced by the reader? By their current location, in Prague? I haven't deciphered that, but what I can say is that each alternate story could be a novella on its own. Oyeyemi is marvelously inventive. I lost track of how many different versions of Paradoxical Undressing she had to dream up. How many were left on the cutting room floor?

I quite often lost my way in Oyeyemi's tome of whimsical characters; I'm sure my experience would have been bettered with a second reading. Finish the last page and immediately return to the first. There were quite a few diversions that I couldn't follow, but overall it's darkly funny and perplexing and alive.

[Kinga · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Helen Oyeyemi. She is absolutely bonkers and really doesn't give a damn. I wanted to love this book badly, because on a sentence level it's exquisite. Any page you open it on, you will find a witty brilliant sentence wherever you lay your eyes.

But. But. But all these sentences don't add up to anything coherent. I'm all for experiments, and non-linear this or that, some meta-fiction here and there but this was just a little too self-indulgent. Every half-thought and half-story made it into this cauldron and each time you found yourself drawn to something it would immediately disappear into this post-modernist soup.

I made it to the end but at what cost?

[idiomatic · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She was so markedly withholding her opinion of the book that Hero ended up asking about that too: “So, what did you think of it?”
Thea said: “Think? I couldn’t. It walked all over me and wiped its feet on my hair.”

true about prague. true about gay drama. helen, an honor as always, my hair is yours anytime.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's something about a Helen Oyeyemi book that is like walking into a beautiful, maximalist room or stumbling upon a secret garden. There are enough little moments and details and weirdnesses to fill a much longer book. And funny too! Anyway, this is cozy fiction, to me.

[Matthew Burris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Light, weird, playful, difficult, breezy, challenging, mercurial? Look, I’m not sure what you want here. It’s a lot but only a hair over 200 pages. Worth the trouble but not for everybody.

[Rev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oyeyemi can do no wrong, in my eyes. It’s bizarre, it’s weird, it’s exceptional. In much the same vein as her other works. Chef’s kiss.

[Ceallaigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Hero's becoming conscious of us. Yes, I do mean you and me. The fourth party that not only calls upon her to be a third-party observer of her own exchanges but consumes the emotion and cognition at least nominally intended for her. And she hates that. Our advantage lessens as, realizing that there is access to restrict, she sets about it without immediate effect. The good news is that she's not going to try to get back at us.”

What I loved the most about PARASOL is its lighthearted cleverness. In an interview with Jennifer Wilson for The New Yorker (see further reading), Oyeyemi said that she “can feel [her] writing changing,” & having read all of her books I can totally see that. Her last book, PEACES was similarly more lighthearted than her previous books but far more surreal, revolving around themes of trust, knowing, reciprocity, & communication in relationships, whereas PARASOL felt more realist in the sense that we (👀) are (all) present in a very real place, exploring elements & themes that concern all of us as readers & residents, travelers & thinkers.

Click here to read my full review of PARASOL AGAINST THE AXE on storygraph complete with my full thoughts, further reading suggestions, and a tonnn of my favorite quotes!

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

CW // sexual content, sex work, death of parent, suicide, nazis, pedophilia (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

[Jungian.Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this one.

This book contains a multiple layered narration. Layer I is a anthropomorphic Prague that expresses the stories of the people who visit, their relationships and their journeys to fulfillment. It explores its history (impacts of wars that have ravaged Europe) and the imprints made by people who pass through it. We are introduced to Hero and Dorothea who are in Prague. Layer 2 follows Hero and Dorothea; we explore how they came to be in Prague, the distance between them with discussion on what they are both searching for as they escape their lives. Layer 3 is a book that have different stories - few people have read this book but everyone seems to have read difterent stories. We see the story in the book constantly change. At first I didn't understand why, and kept wondering if there was even a book at all and Hero (a writer) was just experiencing some illusion. I do think is an illusion influenced by mental state

• It was a bit different for Oyeyemi but it maintained her classic unhinged overstimulated style. It was good exploration of identity, social disengagement and collusion, and changing relationships.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's be honest: Parasol Against the Axe will not be for everybody, but if it ends up being for you, it will really feel like it's for you.

This book almost defies description, which is beyond perfect considering the book-inside-the-book that changes with its reader. It's a cyclical stream-of-consciousness piece of postmodern absurdity that examines reality, memory, history, the aftermath of war, and so much more—all while flipping the script and turning the reader into her own unreliable narrator. It's bizarre and perfect and generous with its intertextuality.

I don't know what else to say. If you're one of those people who re-reads Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 every few years just to see what new gems it will reveal (that's not just me, right?), then definitely read Oyeyemi's Parasol Against the Axe. You won't regret it. Or, if you do, you won't quite be able to articulate why.

[I received an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review.]

[Nansi Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never read a book like it. Unearthly and absurd in the most beautiful way.

[Geonn Cannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This seems like either a love it or hate it book. I loved it. A story about stories told by a city. Weird and wonderful and twisty and surreal. Definitely don't let the bad reviews deter you, but do maybe let them prepare you for what you're about to experience.

[Marina · Rating 4 out of 5]

the writing is EXCEPTIONAL. it was very confusing (less than Peaces though) and i'm not sure what i'm supposed to think about it? but i enjoyed the ride

[Amelia Wagenschutz · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF ughhh I tried so hard to power through but I just couldn’t. This book makes no sense

[Tamar Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun fact, or a fact just for fact's sake, I love weird stuff. Weird stuff is my confiture. But I don't necessarily like weirdness for weirdness's sake. I like my weirdness rooted in reality, because then it is even more absurd when it's juxtaposed against the purely mundane. Like Susanna Clarke's decidedly different Piranesi or Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Weird stuff, but weird with a purpose.


This book is purposeless weird. It's like that time I did mushrooms, and I thought that if I vocalized that I was not OK and, if the others concurred, then we would all be OK. But everyone else just played their part, confirming that they were, indeed, OK. Consequently, I had to play my part, acting as OK as everyone else, which meant that they had to act equally OK, thus re-asserting my role as a factually-OK participant; hence, everybody else had to still be OK, including myself, an unwilling co-conspirator who was definitely not—nor perhaps has ever been—OK. Do you see what I mean? This book was like that: full of grifters, lying and confabulating about all sorts of ghastly nonsense re-nothing. Pretending not to be okay or not not okay, but pretending to be the city or its pervy personification; pretending to be a book or a book within a book; or a story within a story; pretending to be a character; a plot; etc. etc. 

Patience drawn taut, my attention cornered in its ninth circle of hell, I would—almost always—open this book after some much-needed time apart and find myself confronting a character who was a total stranger, a character with no counterfeit in my memory. Who was this charlatan? Where did they come from? Had we spoken before in some small way? Is this like that time that I had to place a coworker who I'd met only once and whose name and position were surely of ultra-importance, but both name and role had turned to limp noodles in the shanty that is my memory? No. I was sure. I did not know them. I had never known them. Get ye back, Satan! Pretender of pretenders. 

Nevertheless, persistence and a dogged determination to see the white light at the end of the acknowledgement page, meant that I had to bury this ghostly grifter in the pages; pages which were soon becoming a wasteland of unknown ne'er-do-wells. 

The question that nags is not necessarily "What did I just read?" but "What was the point?"? Piranesi roamed the halls of a place where water rolled in and out, and there was mystery to it, a plot that seamlessly traveled the tracks of the author's words. That debauched misogynist, Murakami, gave readers a sense of realism to the magic; added plots to his works, even if some were as watery as bird stool. The bar is low Oyeyemi. Raise it or get under it.

So, why did I give it three stars and not downgrade it? Because Oyeyemi can write a damn fine sentence. I think she may be one of the finest, living wordsmiths around.

[Sam]

Unrelentingly playful and clever, even when incorporating serious subjects. Parasol Against the Axe is simultaneously a self-aware love letter to Prague and an exploration of interpretation in literature. It has a bit of the fairy-tale / magical realist touch, but is more postmodern than any other specific genre I can think to label it with. You could describe it as absurdist or oneiric and you would not be wrong, but there is enough grounding it that these adjectives are decorative rather than foundational.

I'm sure there are better authors to compare, but Pynchon, Schulz and maybe a bit of Kafka all sprang to mind at various times while reading. This book is more concerned with language and wordplay than any of those authors, however - which can be tonally strange at times, but is very much in keeping with the postmodernist thread running through it all. I will say I enjoyed looking lots of things up while reading this book, and think Oyeyemi is probably a genius. Ultimately this book reads like what Oyeyemi wanted to write, and whether or not you as the reader want to come along for the ride is really up to you.

[Synne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meget absurd

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC gifted by the publisher

When Hero Tojosoa arrives in Prague to attend a bachelorette weekend hosted by her estranged friend Sofie, she isn't aware of the city's penchant for playing tricks on the unsuspecting. As Hero travels through Prague with a book, she notices the text changes depending on who's reading it to reveal fictional Praguers past and present.

Written from the perspective of a conscious & mischievous city, AXE is a wild and unique examination of blurred lines between reality and fiction, factual history and our memories. Written in a stream-of-consciousness style, AXE took me a while to get into, but I find myself transfixed in this outlandish story as Hero faces some of the most absurd experiences on her trip.

While I only understood 10% of the story, I loved her brilliant examination of readers as "unreliable narrators." As a reader's life evolves, their understanding of a story also changes. How do we tell apart a tale's true meaning vs a reader's interpretation? At its core, AXE reflects how the permutations of our lives influence our shared history.

[Esther Ymkje · Rating 4 out of 5]

Het is eerlijk gezegd lang geleden dat ik zo weg geblazen door een boek - en niet alleen omdat ik het de hele tijd heel goed vond. Het helpt dat ik in Praag ben en dit boek zo'n omwenteling en inwenteling (is dat een woord) in de stad is, maar wat een absurd raar boek. Ik begreep het soms niet en tegelijkertijd vond ik het absoluut prachtig. De korte verhalen die de eerste hoofdstukken van Paradoxal Undressing vormen zijn zeker hoogtepunten. Volgens mij is dit een geweldig boek om in te verdwalen en te accepteren dat je het niet helemaal kan begrijpen - misschien wel net zoals de stad, de straten en alle gebouwen in Praag. Tegelijkertijd gaat het over de kracht van verhalen en over fantasie en geloven in anderen en is het mega queer en cool. Moet echt ff bijkomen. Ik vond het denk ik 4 sterren maar gewoon voor support en de ervaring geef ik er 5. En ook echt een kapot mooie omslag

[Jackson Pierce · Rating 1 out of 5]

this was bad i did not enjoy. the story, there lacking, was all over the place and very hard to follow. was going to give 2 stars just in case im dumb and didn’t get it, but 10/10 would not recommend.