Tuesday 11 May 2010

The Opposite House

by Helen Oyeyemi
You know what, if you want to talk about your original country, if you want to be serious about it, fine. But you don’t need to pretend that you love the place. People need to stop using love of some country that they don’t live in as an excuse for their inability to shut up about it.

Honestly, I wanted to like this book, I did. I went as far as actually finishing it. And was it worth it? No. Reading should be a pleasure, not a struggle. Sometimes I had to re-read a page two or three times to extract some minimum of sense. The worst bits are those about “somewherehouse”: pretentious writing reminiscent of Salman Rushdie but without an interesting (or, rather, any) story to tell.

And it is a shame. Her writing betrays Oyeyemi to be a very talented author. It would be great if she cared about her readers too.

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