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 Afr...

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...

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 w...

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...

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 othe...

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.

In a way, this story is a coming of age. The main character, Maja (a black Cuban), spends the novel trying to figure out who she is and where she belongs among groups of family and friends who are multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial. There are two stories that are happening at the same time and that intersect in subtle ways. There definitely is a lot to consider when reading this story, but I found it fascinating if not complicated. As someone who knows little about Yoruba, Cuba, or Sant...

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...

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.

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 storie...

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

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 t

This book is very detailed and written beautifully. It illustrates the struggle many 'migrants' live through when leaving their homeland to live somewhere else. It displays the difficulty that many 'transplants' experience of learning new cultures and ways to do things while still holding on to the beliefs and traditions one grows up with. At times the book takes itself a little too seriously and seems to lose focus or make the characters seem less important than the way the book is written. Oth...

A magnificent novel, rich in poetry and longing, which will transport you to magical worldsHelen 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. E...

Around the World = CubaDespite 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 boy...

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 s...

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.

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

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 everp...

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....