![]() ![]() A golden chain with a key is fastened around the baby's neck - the key to her identity, perhaps?Īnother story, called, "'Sorry' Doesn't Sweeten Her Tea," opens in "The House of Locks," - an off-kilter cottage where none of the doors or windows can be closed without force. In the opening tale, "Books and Roses," a dark-complexioned baby is abandoned beneath a statue of a Black Madonna in a monk's chapel in Catalonia. Whether they unlock a door or a diary or a nightmare, keys propel Oyeyemi's narratives further into the twilight zone. The single clue that leads a reader through the labyrinth of this collection is the presence of keys in every one of the nine stories here. But, even the most baffling stories in Oyeyemi's new collection, called What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, leave a deep impression - like a scar that stubbornly refuses to fade. ![]() They seem deliberately designed to make a reader feel. Her nouveau Gothic stories are "out there": long and winding, set in surreal landscapes, and elaborately peopled with ghosts, goddesses and grinning puppets. ![]() She's kin to the uncanny likes of Angela Carter, Shirley Jackson and Jeanette Winterson, whose names trail down the back covers of her books like a pagan invocation. Helen Oyeyemi is one of literature's weird sisters. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours Author Helen Oyeyemi ![]()
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