The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi

I got sent Helen Oyeyemi’s second novel, The Opposite House, by the publisher in… 2008, the year after it was published. Oops, sorry Bloomsbury. I’ve read four of her other books, and have finally read this one too. Better late than never? And what prompted me to finally read it? It was one of the 20 books I listed for the inaugural BookTube Spin, and its number came up.

My relationship with Oyeyemi’s writing is definitely a bit up and down. I really love Boy, Snow, Bird and often recommend it to people – others of her books I have liked a lot, but some have tipped over the edge of experimentalism into confusion, for me. How will The Opposite House fare?

Maya lives in London, having moved there with her family when she was five. She only dimly remembers her life in Cuba – there is really only one memory: sitting under the table at their farewell party, hearing a woman singing. It is her defining recollection of life in the land of her parents and their Yoruba gods. And speaking of those gods, among them is Yemaya Saramagua, an Orisha, who lives in the somewherehouse. Short sections between chapters show her existing in this mysterious, liminal place which opens out onto two very different worlds:

On the second floor, rooms and rooms and rooms, some so tiny, pale and clean that they are no more than fancies, sugar-cubed afterthoughts stacked behind doorways. Below is a basement pillared with stone. […] The basement’s back wall holds two doors. One door takes Yemaya straight out into London and ragged hum of a city after dark. The other door opens out onto the striped flag and cooking-smell cheer of that tattered jester, Lagos – always, this door leads to a place that is floridly day.

In London, Maya has discovered she is pregnant – though she hasn’t told her boyfriend Aaron, or her family. She is conflicted by the pregnancy but, in typical Oyeyemi style, it is a conflict that seems to swirl between reality and magical realism. There is no searing look at whether or not to have an abortion, but thought processes that look much more at the metaphysical and abstract implications of pregnancy. All of Oyeyemi’s novels seem to exist in a somewherehouse – a world between worlds, where reality, fairy tale, religion, and magical realism co-exist and inform one another. But reality is one of the ingredients. This cocktail doesn’t diminish the impact of real anxieties and burdens:

Slaves had to be Catholic and obedient or they’d be killed, or worse. The Word ‘slave’ is a big deal to Chabella and Papi; neither of them can get out from under it. It is a blackness in Cuba. It is sometimes bittersweet, for such is the song of the morena; it is two fingers place on a wrist when a white Cuban is trying to describe you. Papi tries to systematise it and talk about the destruction of identity and the fragility of personality, but he is scared of the Word. Mami hides inside the Word, finds reverie in it, tries to locate a power that she is owed.

I think quotes like that give a better sense of what reading an Oyeyemi novel is like than any description I can try to give. The Opposite House incorporates interesting and vital questions about, say, race – Maya and her family are black Cubans; Aaron is a white Ghanaian – and about mental health, portrayed through the ‘hysterics’ that live alongside and pursue Maya and her best friend. The prose never settles on conclusions, or even on the sort of imagery that allows the reader to make their own. Instead, everything is filtered through a beautifully written and imagined prose style that is uniquely Oyeyemi’s – so distinct that it is not just a style but a world.

I found the Yemaya elements beautiful and striking and confusing, but was most drawn to the scenes between Maya and Aaron. There is distance and uncertainty in their relationship, but somehow Aaron was, to me, a really lovely and warm character. Oyeyemi is very good at building up nuanced relationships – familial, romantic, or friendly – but I found something particularly special in that between Maya and Aaron, perhaps because he was kind without that kindness being able to solve problems. It was a twist on the sorts of boyfriends you often see in books.

Boy, Snow, Bird remains my favourite of Oyeyemi’s novels, though I have one yet to read – but The Opposite House is up there, a really vivid and intriguing novel that refuses to let you settle as a reader, and makes up its own rules to help penetrate to deeper, if less graspable, truths about relationships and human nature.