The Opposite House

by Helen Oyeyemi

In a dazzling follow-up to The Icarus Girl, Helen Oyeyemi explores the thin wall between myth and reality through the alternating tales of two young women and their search for the truth about faith and identity.

Maja was five years old when her black Cuban family emigrated from the Caribbean to London. Now, almost twenty years later, Maja is a singer, in love with Aaron, pregnant, and haunted by what she calls “her Cuba.” Growing up in London, she has struggled to negotiate her history and the sense that speaking Spanish or English made her less of a black girl. But she is unable to find herself in the Ewe, Igbo, or Akum of her roots. It seems all that’s left is silence.

Meanwhile distance from Cuba has only deepened Maja’s mother faith in Santeria —the fusion of Catholicism and Western African Yoruba religion—but it also divides the family as her father rails against his wife’s superstitions and the lost dreams of the Castro revolution.

On the other side of the reality wall, Yemaya Saramagua, a Santeria emissary, lives in a somewherehouse with two doors: one opening to London, the other to Lagos. Yemaya 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.

Lyrical and intensely moving, The Opposite House is about the disquiet that follows us across places and languages, a feeling passed down from mother and father to son and daughter.

Genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Fantasy, Africa, Literature, Literary Fiction, Contemporary

258 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

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

[Renae · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this novel, Helen Oyeyemi presents a disquieting, dreamlike story, told from two perspectives: Maja, a Black cubana dealing with pregnancy and her heritage and her mother’s Santería; and Yemaya Saramagua, an Orisha (a minor god in both Santería and Nigeria) living in a “somewherehouse” between Cuba and Lagos. Both characters’ stories seem to have things in common, but I didn’t quite get how or why the author chose to link them. It was far too subtle and tenuous connection, lost in the book’s foreboding magical realism.

At its heart, I felt that The Opposite House dealt with subjects and themes familiar to any reader, especially regarding heritage and immigration. But these themes were so heavily costumed in the surreal and strange elements of the book, it was hard for me to decipher them and make sense of Oyeyemi’s intent. I almost felt that a background and working knowledge of Santería was required to fully comprehend what transpired—particularly Yemaya Saramagua’s portion of the book. Though I loved the magic and mysticism Oyeyemi wrote with, I nevertheless found some aspects of the text inaccessible and confusing.

What I love about Helen Oyeyemi’ books is her prose: the unusual, yet profound, imagery that suffuses her novels. Her stories themselves tend to be hit or miss with me—I loved Mr. Fox but was only mildly enchanted by White Is for Witching and Boy, Snow, Bird. Unfortunately, this latest attempt, The Opposite House, was mostly a miss. I liked aspects of this book, but on the whole I found it difficult and distant.

[Obsidian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was left with mostly confusion about this one. I think that Oyeyemi is a good writer, but since the timelines kept jumping around with Maja's remembrances I could never be sure of things. Towards the end of the book things got more simplified with Maja focusing on her pregnancy, her relationship with Aaron, and her poisoned one with her friend Amy Eleni. The book just abruptly ends leaving you with a severe case of what just happened. At least it left me with that.

I loved hearing about the African Cuban experience in Cuba as well as in London after Maja's family immigrates to Britain. However, Oyeyemi breaks up Maja's narrative by also including her mother's involvement with Santeria and also an Orisha named Yemaya Saramagua (an Orisha is a minor God in Santeria and Nigeria). house” between Cuba and Lagos. Orishas are the human form of the spirits (called Irunmoles) sent by Olorun. The Irunmọlẹ are meant to guide creation and particularly humanity on how to live and succeed on Earth Ayé. I spent most of the book confused anytime we left Maja for glimpses/looks at Yemaya Saramangua. I also spent a lot of time with Google and Wikipedia looking things up.

I realized after doing some research that Yemaya I think is also known as Yemoja who is an Orisha and the mother of all Orishas, having given birth to the 14 Yoruba gods and goddesses. She is often syncretized with either Our Lady of Regla in the Afro-Cuban or seen as various other Virgin Mary figures of the Catholic Church. Yemoja is motherly and strongly protective, and cares deeply for all her children, comforting them and cleansing them of sorrow. She is said to be able to cure infertility in women, and cowrie shells represent her wealth. So I can see why this is the Orisha that ping pongs between chapters of us readers following Maja through her first pregnancy.

I didn't really care for Maja though. She was a confusing character and I don't really know what she wanted. Throughout the book she talks of her son and having ownership of him more than the father of the baby. However, at times she doesn't seem to be interested in things related to her pregnancy (eating well or visiting the doctor). She seems fixated on returning to Cuba and I just don't know what she was looking to find there. I am not an immigrant, so I am sure that I am missing something from this book that others would be able to get a fix on. To me it just seemed her character was confused from beginning to end. And I honestly couldn't get a fix on other characters.

Maja's brother Tomas who is known throughout as the London baby (since he was not born in Cuba like Maja was) reads as half a person in this book. Tomas is not seen as Cuban since he is African and he is not seen as African since he is also Cuban. Tomas is not home sick for Cuba like Maja proclaims to be, but just wants to be somewhere that he belongs.

Maja's relationship with Aaron was also confusing. We know that Aaron is white, but was born and raised in Ghana. So he feels as if he can explain what it is to be black to Maja's father at times or take exception for not really getting what it is to be black/Ghanian. Just by the color of his skin, Aaron is privileged and doesn't really get it. We see this again and again throughout the book. Especially when he mentors three of Amy Eleni's students. I don't get her attraction to him since she doesn't seem to like him much.

Maja's messed up friendship with Amy Eleni was confusing to me too. Amy Eleni was not a good friend. She talks about Maja's pregnancy like it's not happening or seems to hope she miscarries at times. Amy Eleni has been friends with Maja since they were young, but her mother (Maja's) hasn't trusted her since she is white. And Amy Eleni also seems to have feelings for Maja that she is ignoring.

The writing was lyrical and beautiful. I just wish I could get a good sense of rhythm will reading. I think the chapters alternating from Maja and back again after a look at Yemaya Saramagua didn't really work for me at all. I started to skim most of Yemaya's chapters after a while since I kept having to look up words or people named.

The ending of the book was abrupt with us not knowing what Maja is going to do next.

[Luke · Rating 1 out of 5]

He didn't think of money as money, he thought of it as a way to get books, going through reading lists in his head over and over again, returning to the places where he felt strongest.

Back before Amazon bought Goodreads and killed many of the things that don't readily lend themselves to monetization, there was a Most Read Authors feature generated for any user who had uploaded at least one read work to the system. In the year or so prior to this destruction, I was so enamored with watching the statistics of my more mature reading that I went to the trouble of creating digital shelves that allowed me to track past numbers, planned potentials, and, most of all, how close an author was to the hallowed status that would guarantee them a place in the top 100. To this day, that number is four, and with this most recent (and possibly my final) work by Oyeyemi, she has officially escaped the partially submerged hellscape that is the land of the triply read authors. Now, I bought this a few months before my disappointing experience with Boy, Snow, Bird, and I figured a few years break between that 2013 work and this 2007 work would help get me in the state of mind that allowed me to appreciate, sometimes deeply so, the works of 2011 and 2016. Alas, this is one of those works à la The Iguana whose positive qualities are so complex and whose nastier moments are so otherwise; combine that with some pet peeves of mine and you have an experience that I really don't care that I don't know enough regarding in order to properly appreciate. The opposite of a good outcome, but if a year of serious reading by a serious reader goes by and said reader doesn't run into at least one thing that sets off this kind of reaction, I doubt they're pushing their boundaries enough.

England vs. Cuba, state enforced religion vs. state enforced atheism, housed and burgeoning parents in their 20's vs. those who weren't granted an abode, and sometimes a landlord position, by their extremely well off parents: our Euro/Neo-Euro landscape has inculcated great swathes of the globe well in finding the former the unquestioned good and the latter the devil incarnate. One can admittedly build marvels off of such insipid baselines, but I suppose it was just bad luck that this book tried to take on Catholicism as one of side of one of its binaries. Having been raised Catholic in such a haphazard fashion that the aesthetics, ontology, teleology, and a number of other academic frames of thought sunk into me while the faith completely passed me by (evidenced by my taking an entire upper division course on hagiographies of female saints in university and finding it fascinating without the merest hint of being converted) , I tend to take fictional portrayals of it seriously whether I like it or not. Staying in a convent, "personal hysteric", speaking in tongues: it was like someone had gotten their learning in the subjects of anchorites, proofs of sainthood, and manifestations of the canon (ever wonder where that word came from?) from Hot Topic, or some other site that devolves serious manifestations of humans wrestling with the world into cutesy edginess and "waaaaah, I'm so insane! XD." It didn't help that there were multiple instances of people being jerks or straight up abusive in a way that was supposed to be excused by religion, cause for me, after a minimum of two millennia of that being enacted both on the page and off, enough is enough. Ever since my reading of Disobedience, I know I'm capable of appreciating a person valuing a religion on par with their community, daily life, and most intimate personal relationships. This, for a variety of reasons, didn't do it for me, to the point that it'll be some time before I try Oyeyemi again.

It's worth mentioning that I haven't the foggiest regarding the Santeria religion beyond what I know of its Catholic and Yoruban components, and that I'm rarely, if ever, into the weird for weirdness' sake, so if you're on more stable/appreciative ground in regards to either of those two, this might go better with you. Unfortunately, Oyeyemi's not a writer who i can say is in the best position rating average/numbers-wise without my interference, but I gave up whatever little influence I had in that regard when I stopped believing most people's opinions about white boy works, so it's not something I'm going to agonizingly doublethink myself over. Still, Oyeyemi's so unique and has such a variety of works both behind and ahead of her that I haven't yet encountered I can't completely give up ever reading her again, especially in regards to future compositions. However, if I ever run into one of her main characters throwing out the r-slur with minimal if any critical engagement again on this side of the millennium divide, I will have to stop and ask myself why I'm continuing to waste my life.

A certain type of English twat is a certain type of English twat even if he grew up somewhere else—the kind that pretends he doesn't notice differences when really he notices, and he does care, and he does think about it.

[Emily M · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5
This is now the fourth Oyeyemi book I’ve read (after Gingerbread, Peaces, and White Is for Witching)…and the second she ever published. Already, in her early twenties, Oyeyemi was showing her talent for beautiful prose and her penchant for dream-like, non-linear, magical-realism-adjacent storytelling. However, I think later books walk the line of having that non-traditional style without confusing the reader too much a bit better.

I picked this book up on the promise of a Cuban diaspora main character, curious if it would have overlap with my family’s experience. In some ways yes, and in some ways no. For one thing, the difference in white and Black Cuban experiences is a point that is touched on deliberately. For another, this family went to London instead of the US. But the food traditions, the complex feelings that come from having left because of Fidel’s manner of governance when you agree with all or most leftist principles - yeah, those were similar!
“Brigitte…was afraid of Fidel because, above all, he asked for the people’s affection, and she didn’t see how justice could live alongside affection…lovers get jealous; they are petty and impetuous; they give you stupid gifts you cannot use. When things become desperate lovers may stalk you, and ultimately…they would tap your phone.”
And while I don’t know if I agree as a generalization that “Cubans are cheerful, Cubans are resilient, Cubans are collectivist. In my mother’s country, I thought, la lucha is such that people are not equipped to understand when they are unhappy. It’s a situation-specific kindness from God…they have no internal off switch and so it is that they go on and on and on.”...that doesn’t NOT describe my family!

There seems to be a bit of a theme of a fine line between madness and connection to the spirit world in this story that reminds me a bit of Freshwater. Maja and her friend Amy Eleni talk to each other of their inner “hysteric”, and Maja seems to be slowly going crazy from a drip in her apartment that her boyfriend (who owns the place!) is weirdly slow to have fixed. She is also pregnant and reluctant to talk about that to the point that people think she doesn’t want the baby, even though she does. Maja’s parents are both academics, but her mother has a spiritual side, a connection to the orisha, that can seem a little mad, and which her husband (who lives in books) doesn’t understand at all.
“I soon outgrew Mami’s evening flower ceremonies…What is it that’s holy about those flowers? Is it that they burn? Or that they burn so readily? But you can burn a cross, a witch, a piece of toast…”
And her brother…look, it’s said that he turned out to not be autistic, but I’m not sure that’s true and even if it is, he’s got something non-neurotypical going on! Even the second storyline that focuses on the orishas (West African gods brought to the New World along with their people) involves them exhibiting signs of depression and amnesia. For example, there is one, Ochun, who is a fertility goddess – but now she is called “Amy” and has bruises on her arms, seemingly echoing Amy Eleni, who has been undergoing hormone injections to donate her eggs, in response to her mother’s charge that as a lesbian she is “wasting” her fertility!

The biggest theme, though, seems to be one of identity. The orishas have trouble knowing who they are because the people they are connected to and their cultures change as they move around the world. Maja’s boyfriend Aaron likes to think of himself as Ghanaian…and he is, because he grew up there, but he is also white and he doesn’t seem to understand how that changes things.
"'Anyway, these boys are Ghanaian, so she thought I'd be perfect.' I scrutinize him, but I can't tell what percentage of what he just said is a joke. He must know that if he mentors these boys, he is not showing them what a Ghanaian can do with his life, but what a white guy can do who chooses or refuses Ghana at any given moment. I change the subject."
There is a conversation about how Black people aren’t supposed to speak Spanish, with Maja firing back that then they shouldn’t speak English either! (Both being the languages of slave owners and colonizers…but that’s what she know how to speak now). Maja’s one clear memory of Cuba is challenged by another person who was present, which causes her to spiral and think she needs to go back right now to try and figure out what her connection to Cuba is. Her brother Tomás has a problem where he responds to other people’s names, as if he doesn’t know what his is. And so on.

The book overall is probably trying to do too much (as I find is often the case with first or second novels!), but there is a lot of interesting stuff to explore.

[Marius Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magnificent novel, rich in poetry and longing, which will transport you to magical worlds

Helen Oyeyemi is extraordinarily talented. She is also young and prolific -- her first novel was published before her 18th birthday -- and she doesn't always develop that talent to the full. In this extraordinary book, however, she fulfills all her great promise.

"The Opposite House" is the fictional autobiography of Maja, a young singer whose family have migrated from Nigeria to Cuba, and then to London. Enriched by three cultures, Maja is also left with inconsolable yearnings for what she has left behind. As she says of herself, "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 ... I arrived here just before that age."

Moving effortlessly in and out of magical imaginings and memories that may be fantasies, Oyeyemi's narrative simply drags the reader along helplessly. Her language is poetic, soaring, often elliptical, sometimes generously lavish, always a delight. Some readers have complained that this is a dull read. I find that astonishing. To me, this is one of the most enjoyable books of the 21st Century. Others have found it difficult, which is perhaps the result of trying too hard to make sense of what is mystical in the novel, rather than simply experiencing it as something beguilingly crafted between poetry and narrative, partly understood, partly felt.

Like Maja herself, the book is full of dichotomies, opposites, a house with two doors that lead to distinct cultures. The smoky gods of Voodoo vie with the Catholic Trinity; Santeria confronts the hard-edged tenets of Marxism; Maja's best friend, Amy Eleni, is a Cypriot Lesbian, the father of Maja's child is Aaron, a white Jew born in Ghana -- Maja's world is always divided, and she is always yearning for the other half, always lost.

I recommend this beautiful book to all readers who are willing to let go and be pulled into new experiences. To be savoured and enjoyed and pondered over.

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Around the World = Cuba

Despite being mainly set in London, this is my selection for Cuba. It the story of Maja Carrera, a black Cubana, the child of academics exiled by the Castro regime, whose only experience of Cuba exists in the form of half-remembered memories, snatches of song, and the Santería rituals of her mother. Santería forms a divisive subject in her parent's lives; embraced by her spiritualist mother whilst rejected by her rationalist father. Maja, pregnant by her white Ghanaian boyfriend, attempts to reconcile impending motherhood with her understanding of her heritage, connections to family and friends, and her "hysteric", the deep female part of her psyche understood only by her closest friend, Amy Eleni.

It is interwoven with a tale of Yemaya Saramagua, a Santería orisha (spirit/saint), who lives in the magical somewherehouse, which opens a door into London on one side and Lagos on the other. Aya's tale is dreamlike and rambling, as she attempts to discover the truth about her family and save a character called Amy.

Oyeyemi's writing is beautiful, lyrical and poetic, but the two strands of the story come together in a way that doesn't quite work for me.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was hard to rate this book, because I enjoyed it a lot on some levels but felt that it had some significant flaws. Helen Oyeyemi's writing is an unbelievable pleasure. She successfully intermingles the symbolism of a spiritual folk tale with the gritty details of modern urban life and pop culture references. Her portrayal of "the hysteric" that hides within so many young women is spot-on. Her protagonist, Maja, rings very true when she experiences a tumultuous mixture of emotions in dealing with her family, her best friend, and her lover.

And yet, the book seemed to be lacking a concrete core. We are made to care about Maja when she is written so beautifully, but her story is not one of action but of introspection. The other characters in the novel -- Maja's parents, her best friend Amy Eleni, her brother, her boyfriend Aaron -- are given unique personalities, but at times it feels like we are only getting a hint of what those characters could become if we saw more of them. And the symbolic scenes set in the somewherehouse, a spiritual place with doors to Lagos and to Cuba (reflecting the complex ethnic background of the narrator, a black Cuban living in exile in London), are difficult to follow and interrupt the main narrative with their symbolism. The somewherehouse scenes set a beautiful tone, and provide a nice juxtaposition with Maja's real life in contemporary London, but I found myself wishing for less of them.

I will certainly try reading The Icarus Girl, since it seems to have received more acclaim and I truly enjoyed Ms. Oyeyemi's writing style. But this book might leave other readers behind.

[Zen Cho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really impressive. I found Oyeyemi's style poetic but surprisingly readable -- I often get impatient with too much poetry, but here it didn't grate at all. Her style really worked for me. I found the characters vivid and interesting. And it was really nice for once to read about a female character who loves and (mostly) gets along with her mom. Stories about families are so often about how they hate each other.

The main problem with this is that I had no idea what was going on with the parallel story and how it was supposed to connect to the main one. And I don't understand why it ended where it did. Will prolly have to read some reviews to figure out what was going on.

[Emily B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting because I didn’t understand much of this book but I really liked the sentences.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I was reading this book, I was thinking "I like this." And then as I finished it and shut it up, I thought "No, wait. I don't like this. Do I?" I still don't know, in fact. I think the closest I can come is that I nearly liked it. Nearly!

The writing itself is not the problem: Helen Oyeyemi's prose is beautiful and in the main story (well, what I consider the main plotline) she writes poetically about Maja's struggles to come to understand who she really is. Her writing about Maja and her best friend Amy Eleni's 'hysterics' - the personification of the two girls tendencies towards hysteria and depression - was incredible. I found myself nodding along in happy and startled agreement.

But - but! - the other story (the secondary plotline) set in the house of the title is poetic, but rambling. The story of a girl - goddess? spirit? demon? - trying to find her family (I think that is what she was doing, at least) makes little sense and I cannot even draw successful parallels to the main story, which surely must be the point. Is it myths with references I'm missing? Is it religious? Is it entirely fiction? I found it nonsensical and annoying, quite honestly.

No magic, a different ending and more of the honey-sweet writing, please. I would have edited this to pieces, but. That's just my opinion.

[Noor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought I was used to Oyeyemi's writing style by now, but I was incredibly confused by this novel. Although I was disappointed with it, so far it's her only novel I've been unsatisfied with.

On a random side note - Ibeyi is a group composed of twin sisters that sing in French, Spanish, English and Yoruba. If Helen Oyeyemi made music, I think her sound and visuals would match that of Ibeyi's. If you've never read any of Oyeyemi's books, listening to these sisters may give you a good idea of what to expect.

[Jess Kallberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disruptive, disquieting, haunting. It can be difficult to find the balance between reality and the spiritual world in this novel. When I let go of following things literally and let the words wash over me, I found the story to be transportive.

[Aňa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe there are two ways in which a book can appeal to a reader. Its themes, plot, character depiction, etc. can resonate with the rational part of your mind, or it can work its magic on a more visceral level; with me, this usually happens when an author masters language in a way that borders on witchery.

And Helen Oyeyemi is a witch. Trust me, she must be.

Because The Opposite House is rendered in the richest language imaginable, both sweet and spicy, just like the exotic food that is everpresent in the writing.

The structure of the book is based on two storylines: the first is the story of Maja Carmen Carrera, a twenty-something black Cuban who grew up in London after her intellectual parents grew disillusioned with Castro’s regime and emmigrated to the UK. At the beginning of the book Maja finds out she is pregnant and this discovery triggers her quest to find, or define, her baby’s and her own identity in terms of ethnicity (her Cuban identity seems to clash both with her being a descendant of African slaves and a product of assimilation into western culture since the age of 5), her blackness/African-ness (interestingly contrasted with her white Jewish boyfriend’s view of himself as a Ghanaian as he was born and spent his entire childhood and adolescence there) and the cultural and especially religious aspect of those identities. She is frustrated by what she perceives as inherent racism in Catholicism but is unable to connect to the beliefs of her African ancestors in any meaningful or positive way.

Here is where the second storyline comes in. In it, Yemaya (Aya) Saramagua, an incarnation of the water Orisha (a spirit being in the religion/folklore of Yoruba people), lives in a house which is, through its basement, connected to Lagos on one side and to London on the other, wanders a mystical version of Cuba which seems to be suspended in time, and from time to time interacts with other characters from the Yoruba/Orisha pantheon. All of them seem to be losing their grip on the mystical nature of their world and themselves; they forget their stories/mythology and, as a result, gradually lose their powers and wither. Or do they?

The two worlds are connected through the character of Chabella, Maja’s Mami and practitioner of an idiosyncratic mixture of religious beliefs (Santeria, Orishas, Catholicism). It seems that her prayers are what keeps the characters in Yemaya’s storyline tethered to existence. As pertains to her daughter, Chabella’s influence is much more ambiguous – she is infinitely nurturing but at the same time portrayed the most likely source of (some of) Maja’s trauma.

Needless to say, Maja’s and Yemaya’s struggles throughout the book are not always pretty. But I was in SO deep – immersed in the writing to a degree that rendered me unable to distinguish between the beautiful and the painful, between sweetness and the pain of burning up.

What is also worth mentioning is Oyeyemi’s portrayal of the male characters. Both Maja’s Papi and her boyfriend Aaron are strong and supportive, the archetypes of apparent stability especially vis-à-vis the “hysterics” that are the females. Yet this stability is depicted as being rooted in ignorance. They fail (or refuse) to perceive what the women in their life recognize as important, and hurt their partners by being unable to acknowledge and accept what is in their view irrational.

The Opposite House is Oyeyemi’s second novel, written in her early twenties, and it shows what might be viewed as the best and the worst traits of a sophomore effort. It shows bravery, an almost staggering amount of it; even though she must have been aware that very few members of her intended audience would have been familiar with the Orishas or any other aspects of the Yoruba belief systems, she was nevertheless willing to challenge her readers by depicting them through allegory and in contemporary settings rather than in the form of a simple retelling. That said, the book was not without its challenges. At times the writing borders on confusing: multiple characters are referred to by two or more names; some names are used in both storylines without any logical connections between the two characters. Also, the richness petered out a little towards the end; the conclusion wasn’t as satisfactory as it could have been. And, as with Oyeyemi’s more recent book Boy, Snow, Bird, she seems unable or unwilling to imbue the writing with a sense of time and place. There were all these references to Walkmans and video cassettes that should have placed the story in a specific period of time (80s? 90s?) but it just did not work for me.

Overall, a very strong 4-star read and I definitely want to reread the book at some point.

[Samantha (AK) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm still not sure what to say about this one. I started out liking it, but as time went on I liked it less and less. The last 50 - 75 pages, especially, I was just trying to get through, and when they were gone I didn't feel satisfied with the ending.

There are two stories here, and themes of identity and transition and transformation abound in both. Maya's attempt to find her place when she doesn't quite know where that is, and Yemaya's displaced experiences in the somewherehouse echo each other... at first.

I liked the parts about the "inner hysteric." There's an interview with Oyeyemi that sheds light on where she was going with that bit, and it's relatable. Really, the complicated friendship between Maja and Amy Eleni was one of the better parts of the book. We've all got that one friend; and if Maja and Amy Eleni are more complicated than most... well, that's alright. What they don't tell each other is as important to the story as what they do.

But as the story rolled on, Maja's life seemed to disintegrate. Her pregnancy, her depression, her relationship with her parents, it all went downhill. And the more I look back at it, the harder it is to see where the story was trying to go, because--at the end--everything seems suddenly quiet and peaceful, and there doesn't seem to be any reason for it.

Unfortunately, the part of the story dealing with Yemaya Saramagua ("Aya") became increasingly opaque to me as the pages turned, and the connection to Maja's story more tenuous. Maybe it's my unfamiliarity with Afro-Cuban Santeria, maybe it's not. Regardless, what started as the story of a displaced goddess became incomprehensible by it's ending. What happened to the seeds? Why did the Kayodes die when they did? Why was Ochun's name Amy and is that supposed to relate to the other Amy (Eleni)? Why does Yemaya's father want to destroy her? What is the deal with her mother and Proserpine? I am so confused.

The writing itself is beautiful, but the story's overly ambitious. Maybe I'm fooling myself a little, and I just want to like it, but I'm torn between two and three stars. The parts I liked, I really liked, and the parts that I disliked seem stronger in memory than in the reading. Knowing my mood, I'm choosing to round up on the assumption that this is--at least in part--on me.

[Rhoda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maja is a black Cuban who moved to London with her family when she was five years old. On the (I presume?) spiritual side in the somewherehouse lives Yemaya who is an Orisha (a minor god in both Santeria and Nigeria).

Both are trying to find their place in the world and where home is.

Without doubt, the author has a beautiful writing style, but I found this book vague and I wasn’t really able to make any meaningful connection to the story or the characters. I was confused as to how the two stories connected, but that may have just been me 🤷🏻‍♀️

I thought Maja’s story was far more interesting (thankfully the other storyline was much briefer), but I found the characters difficult to understand and get a grasp of. They felt a bit wishy washy to me and Maja’s relationships with her family, best friend and boyfriend were hard to fathom, as she she almost didn’t seem to particularly like any of them!?

Unfortunately this book wasn’t for me, but I did appreciate the lovely writing style ⭐️⭐️/5

[Asia J · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[sahej · Rating 3 out of 5]

i liked a lot of the themes in this book but ultimately found it very confusing

[Olivia Theron · Rating 2 out of 5]

I need a lobotomy

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cryptic! Beautiful! Deep!

[Ceallaigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Aya overflows with ache, or power. When the accent is taken off it, ache describes, in English, bone-deep pain. But otherwise ache is blood… fleeing and returning… red momentum. Ache is, ache is is is, kin to fear—a frayed pause near the end of a thread where the cloth matters too much to fail. The kind of need that takes you across water on nothing but bare feet. Ache is energy, damage, it is constant, in Aya’s mind all the time. She was born that way—powerful, half mad, but quiet about it.”

TITLE—The Opposite House
AUTHOR—Helen Oyeyemi
PUBLISHED—2007

GENRE—literary fiction
SETTING—Cuba, London, & Lagos
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Yoruba spiritual traditions, Catholicism, & mythology; neurodivergency; Death & the Persephone story; inherited strength & inherited trauma; displacement & cultural estrangement; homesickness & nostalgia; identity through memory

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
STORY/PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
BONUS ELEMENT/S—the personal hysteric
PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Those gods who trip us up, then haul us up, then string us up, who understand that it hurts, but also understand that it needs to. They’re deadly friends from stories, their names braided into explanations for the heavy nights edged with uncertain light like dull pearls…”

Oh wow. This is my second to last of Oyeyemi’s works that I have left before I’ve read all of her books and after THE ICARUS GIRL, this one is my new favorite. Thematically it felt like a sequel to TIG or not a sequel but part of a thematic series.

(WHITE IS FOR WITCHING I feel like segues Oyeyemi’s work from her first two novels into the dark, experimental fairy tale stories (MR FOX, BOY SNOW BIRD, GINGERBREAD, WHAT IS NOT YOURS IS NOT YOURS, etc. And what’s also interesting is that GINGERBREAD felt like a bit of another segue between the earlier fairy tale stories and PEACES which again had a whole new feel—though similar still in tone and poetry—compared to her earlier works. It’s interesting to see her thematic interests develop and change even though her first book, IMO, is just as strong as her most recent.)

Anyway, where was I? 😂 Oh yes, THE OPPOSITE HOUSE tackles the themes of cultural displacement and being homesick without having a place that one could truly call home, of being “from” a place in which you are seen as an outsider or cultural other. I enjoyed reading this book during Caribbean Heritage Month as well since it addresses a lot of common themes and subjects from Caribbean literature. I never have the words to adequately discuss Oyeyemi’s genius so please read the extensiveee list of favorite quotes I’ve transcribed below. 😁

An incomplete list of fairy tales mentioned or alluded to in this story: Snow White, Baba Yaga, and Alice in Wonderland. Gods and mythological figures mentioned or alluded to: St Teresa of Avila, various Orisha gods (Olorun, Ochun, Orumbila, Yemaya, Chango, Echun-Elegua, Iku, Ogun), Prosperine/Persephone, The Virgin Mary, St Bernadette, Joan of Arc. I probably missed some but it was fun to see such a variety of fairy tale/mythological figures in one of Oyeyemi’s earlier works.

I’ll probably read MR FOX later this summer and then when I go to reread I think I’m going to read her books in order of publication, starting with her two plays and then the whole way through all the books again because, like she hints at in PEACES, there does feel like there is something of a map and compass at work here and that sounds like just the voyage I’d like to take. 🥰

“But then I saw the song come through her. It came because she didn’t give up.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW // self harm (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—
- everything else by Helen Oyeyemi
- Freshwater, by Akwaeke Emezi
- Blue, by Emmelie Prophète

Favorite Quotes:

“Aya overflows with ache, or power. When the accent is taken off it, ache describes, in English, bone-deep pain. But otherwise ache is blood… fleeing and returning… red momentum. Ache is, ache is is is, kin to fear—a frayed pause near the end of a thread where the cloth matters too much to fail. The kind of need that takes you across water on nothing but bare feet. Ache is energy, damage, it is constant, in Aya’s mind all the time. She was born that way—powerful, half mad, but quiet about it.”

“Books: I am attracted and repelled; books are conversations that are not addressed to me and I want to sneak up and listen but I also want to be invited in. If I was invited in the conversation would not be what it was.”

“…being asked to repeat myself batters down the words in me, makes my tongue fall down my throat.”

“Mami is a Santero. She constantly tells me that I don’t know what that means. I soon outgrew Mami’s evening flower ceremonies. After a while, the flowers that seemed to answer Chabella’s questions in raptures of hush and smoke revealed themselves to be limp rice paper. What is it that’s holy about those flowers? Is it that they burn? Or that they burn so readily? But you can burn a cross, a witch, a piece of toast…”

“The gods were not afraid, but they wept.”

“If you still knew who you were, you had to keep it a secret. The gods hid among the saints and apostles and nobody perceived them unless they wanted to…”

“…it didn’t take as much as people had thought for Catholicism and Yoruba to fuse together. The saints intercede for us with God, who must despise us to let us suffer so. The Orishas intercede for us with Olorun who, being a darker side of God, possibly despises us more. A painting of a saint welling holy tears and the story of an Orisha teach you the same thing—if you cry for someone, it counts as a prayer.”

“Beware Proserpine, since she is the murder that walked from my heart.”

“Like every girl, I only need to look up and a little to the right of me to see the hysteria that belongs to me, the one that hangs on a hook like an empty jacket and flutters with disappointment that I cannot wear her all the time. I call her my hysteric, and this personal hysteric of mine is designer made (though I’m not sure who made her), flattering and comfortable, attractive even, if you’re around people who like that sort of thing. She is not anyone, my hysteric; she is blank, electricity dancing around a filament, singing to kill. It’s not that there are two Majas; there is only one, but she can disappear into her own tension and may one day never come back.”

“Amy Eleni gets it. When I first tried to describe the hysteric to her, she snorted and said, ‘You can’t speak for all of us. My personal hysteric walks three paces behind me at all times, and when it’s all a bit much, I kind of hang back and she kind of hurries forward, and she jumps on my back and takes me down. Then she stands up in my place.’ I said I didn’t like that idea. I said it sounded like a denial of responsibility, a denial that Amy Eleni was underneath her hysteric. ‘I am underneath her,’ Amy Eleni said. ‘She has her fucking stilettos digging into my spine.’”

“When Amy Eleni isn’t doing well her thoughts ignore her and come out exactly the way they want to.”

“Those gods who trip us up, then haul us up, then string us up, who understand that it hurts, but also understand that it needs to. They’re deadly friends from stories, their names braided into explanations for the heavy nights edged with uncertain light like dull pearls…”

“To us, these gods are historical artefacts.”

“Echun-Elegua, the trickster god, who protects us from the works of other, inferior tricksters. He hides behind the door of his ramshackle, crazy-beamed house, watching the people who hurry up and down his crossroads like so many dusty-backed beetles. Some people are speeding past so quickly, so intent on their maps, that they don’t even notice Elegua’s house rocking nonchalantly on the heels of its stilt-feet like Baba Yaga’s hut getting ready to run.”

“But if you forget your ancestors you forget yourself. Isn’t that what it is to run mad, to forget yourself?”

“Carmen told Chabella stories about the Orishas as if she were telling about a place that she had just left and was impatient to get back to…”

“Be who you were before before.”

“When trouble comes, you don’t sit around thinking, Oh, but at least I haven’t had trouble before. The point is that you forget all other times. That’s what’s so bad about trouble, that’s what makes it trouble—you can’t see your way around it.”

“Brigitte and Chabella would lie wounded by the heat on their bedroom floor some noontimes listening to Elvis Presley, then to The Platters with the volume turned low. Brigitte’s understanding of English was far better than Chabella’s, but She still refused to divulge which of the songs told the truth about love.”

“Then, when Brigitte needed money, my Abuelo Damascus said to her, ‘I’ll pay you to teach my daughters German. The German language is poetic—that is to say it is both vague and precise. Perhaps once my girls have learnt German they will all become men and go and fight for freedom and frustrated dreams.’”

“Children know, and when they know… it is terrible.”

“Those West Africans brought another country in with them, a whole other country in their heads.”

“It is hard to learn how to be black when people don’t let you.”

“But then I saw the song come through her. It came because she didn’t give up.”

“Once the story had danced itself out, I waited for the goddess to be gone. Then, behind her back, I clapped until my hands hurt. Papi wolf-whistled. I felt winded. It was infinitely better than cartoons.”

“Ensoulment is never imagined as the cold terror that it is.”

“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 towards home, but trusting home to find her.”

“He is such a neurotic storyteller; he never trusts that I am still listening. I think he works on a model of the first stories he learnt to love; Ghanaian call and response stories, tales as an eager echo thrown back and forth amongst the same people.”

“He didn’t think of money as money; he thought of it as a way to get books…”

“You shouldn’t run away from grief, but my God, you must run from madness. That country. It seems that no one there is able.”

“If you should find yourself in a place that is indifferent to you and there is someone there that your spirit stretches to, then that person is kin.”

“I don’t know, sometimes it just doesn’t really feel like anywhere over here. I look at maps and stuff and none of the places seem real. I think that’s what happens when you don’t belong to a country, though—lines are just lines, and letters are just letters and you can’t touch the meaning behind them the way you can when you’re home and you look at a map and you see, instead of a place name, a stretch of road or an orchard or a ice-cream parlour around the corner. You know. It’s OK, though. I didn’t expect to know this place.”

“Outside it is calm. The sun’s gift to the day is the most benevolent yellow Aya has ever seen. Today is bright yellow like waking well after a long illness; the heart’s tinny human post-crisis. Gold.”

“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.”

“Chabella outstares her flames.”

“My father was kind to people because he didn’t expect them to be good, only interesting.”

“It is so difficult to talk about demons and gods and spirits without it seeming that you are mad, or sarcastic, or simple, or talking in pictures, or trying to confuse. Or trying to be interesting. It is difficult to talk about demons and make it understood that even if “spirit” is the best word available, it isn’t the right word.”

“There is skin, yes. And then, inside that, there is your language, the casual, inherited magic spells that make your skin real. It’s too late now—even if we could say ‘Shut up’ or ‘Where’s my dinner?’ in the first language, the real language, the words weren’t born in us. And unless your skin and your language touch each other without interruptions, there is no word strong enough to make you understand that it matters that you live. The things that really say ‘stay’ are an Orisha, a kind night, a pretended boy, a garden song that made no sense. Those come closer to being enough.”

“…that strange, safe Old Testament feeling that was there in the night, peace in the centre of a locust swarm.”

“Inside her is a happiness that threatens to unzip her and step out singing.”

“I am trying to make sure that I live.”

“…the leak is out of proportion and out of control. The leak is tears. And tears are prayers, but I think Mami only says that because she is best at tears.”

“Hysteria has got nothing to do with an empty womb.”

“Chabella trusts what the German language has enabled her to call her spiritsoulmind.”

“Proserpine, I saw you from the first.”

“Fire climbs the stairs.
There is more time, but not much.
If you are lucky, you lose a mother to get another.
If you are lucky, you shed a body to climb inside another.
Sometimes a child with wise eyes is born. And some people will call that child an old soul. And that is surely enough to make God laugh.”

[Kerfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Large parts of this vibrant and intense book are a mystery to me. And yet it was so absorbing I missed my subway stops; I went forward and back and forward again, looking to make it whole in my mind, to pick up the stitches I seemed to have dropped.

I think it is most of all about identity, heritage, what it means to come from somewhere, to belong somewhere, to connect. How to balance knowledge and spirit, the imagined and the real, the masculine and the feminine.

"Their branches brush the ground...(their roots are buried in the sky)..."

Even the names of the characters are fluid. They are themselves (who are they?), they are someone else (who were they?), they are trying on masks in multiple mirrors (who do they want to be?).

An immigrant straddles two cultures, two languages, often rejected by both the past and the present. If one's ancestors were brought to the "old" country as slaves, a further layer appears. How to sort out a black Cuban living in London? "In my blood is a bright chain of transfusion, Spaniards, West Africans, indigenous Cubans, even the Turkos: the Cuban Lebanese." Where is she really from? Does she belong anywhere, to any people?

Oyeyemi's novel definitely invites a second reading. An entire paper could probably be written about her use of the hysteric, the film "Vertigo", and even the mention of the poet Elizabeth Jennings. And I may want to learn a bit more about Santeria and its gods and goddesses first, too.

[Chloe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Beautifully written, as always with Oyeyemi, but this book would have been much stronger if it had either devoted equal time to Maja and Aya, or cut Aya's sections entirely. As it is, I didn't quite understand what the purpose of Aya's sections were, and it made me less interested in the book as a whole than I might have been. Maja and her family and friends are really interesting characters — I just wish I hadn't been distracted from them by a story that wasn't as engrossing.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Opposite House tells the story of Maja, a black Cuban living in London with her family and boyfriend, and Yemaya who lives in Somewherehouse, which has two doors that lead to London and Lagos. This book focuses on immigration, culture, searching for truth and discovering oneself.
Read more here⬇️
https://lindasyearlybookchallenge.wor...

[Amanda]

so far it's mesmerizing. probably the most poetic of Helen's books.

....

haven't been able to get into it. the language is mesmerizing but i'm about 50 pages in & no plot that i can discern. it's annoying to me that i need plot for fiction, but i do. ergh. setting it aside for now.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Oyeyemi writes very beautiful prose, this novel just didn't hold my interest as much as The Icarus Girl.

[Mely · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not fantasy, religion. Note Dickinson in chapter titles.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always, her prose is mesmerizing.
As always, it mostly went over my head!

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Um. Huh.

[Currently Googling: "opposite house oyeyemi about????"]

Loved it. Didn't really understand it. Have nothing intelligent to say about it.

[Cait McKay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helen Oyeyemi is a story teller. Her work is steeped in religion, folklore, and mythology. Her characters breathe prayer and power. She will grab your attention quick, and send your spiraling through your own identity. Her stories whip in and out of the fantastic; one moment a character is studying for an exam, and the next they are overcome by the power of an ancient healer. 

She is one of my favorite authors. She's absolute magic. I picked up What is Not Yours is Not Yours when it was brand new; the cover was striking, the title reminded me of Miranda July, and I hadn't read any Oyeyemi before. I devoured that in a night, then set my sights on her back catalog. My kindle made it easy; just tap, own, read. Why then, did it take me years to finish Opposite House?

Well, I got distracted. I got busy. I got hurt and I stopped reading for months on end. The kindle died, I got better, I got distracted again, and returned to hard copies. I thought I had finished all of Oyeyemi's work- so imagine my surprise when, stuck at an airport and killing time during a layover, I installed the kindle app on my phone to find Opposite House! I had started it and immediately forgotten about it. I jumped back in, made it onto my flight, fell asleep...and forgot about it again. 

My job changed quite a bit in mid-March- from necessity, not choice- much like many others all over the world. My hours stretched into days, my desk life melted away, and I found myself providing care at all hours of the day and night. Frequently, during the night, my charges were asleep. I was there just in case. While sitting at a bedside, just in case, I realized that I had forgotten my book. Digging around in my phone for something to pass the time, I once again stumbled upon Opposite House. 

Opposite House and I were not exclusive. I continued to read beyond the bounds of this novel while returning to it when times were slow. Things have slowed down again here for the time being, and I have (mostly) returned to my previous role- but this time there was a change. I wasn't going to forget Opposite House again. I opened it on my desktop and read it during quiet moments- one of those moments is happening right now. After four years, three mediums, and dozens of starts and stops, Opposite House and I have come to an end. 

Part of the fragmentation in my reading came from the story itself; our time is divided between Maya and her family in London, and the Opposite House- a magical space where doors open into different places: London, Lagos, and Cuba. Moments between London and Opposite House bleed regularly in and out of each other; it is frequently difficult to tell where one thought ends and another begins. Characters respond to multiple names, reality becomes fantasy and back again, and it is easy to become overwhelmed by the process. I walked away from this book many times, but luckily as disjointed as it is, I was strangely able to slip back in without missing a beat. 

Maya and her family are Cubans of African descent; she doesn't feel Cuban, she doesn't feel African, but the pull of both cultures tugs at her hem. Her family immigrated to London after Castro's Revolution. Her father soothes himself with his work, her mother struggles to find herself. She copes by building an altar; she believes in Catholic saints, Yoruba protectors, and the magic of Santeria. Maya's boyfriend is from Africa, and he is white. He holds tightly to his heritage, but it is difficult for Maya to accept his world.

Opposite House is Oyeyemi's second novel, and her first was written while she was still in school. I did not love this piece as much as I have loved her later work; you can see the bones of what she will become, but the magic has yet to fully form around them. I would not recommend this piece as an introduction to Oyeyemi, but it is a curiosity worth holding to the light. 

[Justine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Oyeyemi and recognize her technical and artistic brilliance, but this one was a little tough for me.

I love her use of magical realism and Orishas from Santeria to tell a story of diaspora, and I get this is a rumination on belonging, race, family obligations. There were passages that were deeply emotionally resonant and lyrically beautiful.

Here is my issue: Oyeyemi is rarely a literal writer (vibe queen, truly, IMO) but if you combine the dreamy-scape of not super plot-driven novels with narrators (and in this case multiple narrators AND THEIR FAMILIES AND FRIENDS) that are often teetering on the edge of insanity, what I end up getting from the books is just vibes and confusion, and a lingering sense that I should be making better connections about plot and symbolism but not even being sure if that is the point.

I also really struggled with religiosity (as a theme) and a main character that I just wanted to send to therapy/ a doctor because clearly her brain chemistry could use some support. For the record, I don't love it when I think like that but this novel really just dragged me kicking and screaming away from empathy. Ugh I am the worst.