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| Mr. Fox |
Helen Oyeyemi
Several weeks ago I featured Mr. Fox in a Book Beginnings post. I had good intentions about finishing the book and quickly posting my review. Well, I did finish the book shortly thereafter. The review...not so much. But here it is now!
This was my first book by Helen Oyeyemi, who I heard of through Eva over at A Striped Armchair. If you aren't following her, you absolutely should be. She reads a ton and recommends super interesting books.
In Mr. Fox, the title character is a writer who has a penchant for killing off the women in his stories. His muse, Mary Foxe, appears and attempts to take him to task for this. They begin a game of stories, back and forth. Mrs. Fox is not amused. She feels her husband slipping away to this conjured woman. How can she compete?
The story is great, and the writing is beautiful. For example, I love this excerpt. It makes me want to give up my laptop and switch to an older method of writing.
I look inside my typewriter. There's a city in there. Black and grey columns and no inhabitants.And later, when a character is describing Egypt:
Nut crane her neck over her long, lithe, blue back to kiss Geb, and Geb cradles her, careful, because she is nothing, less than nothing, but if he should drop her it would be the end of everything.
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| Nut & Geb |
Fortunately, Oyeyemi has written three other books so far, so there's more of her work for me to discover.
3 comments:
Thanks so much for the shout out! :)
And I'm thrilled you're now an Oyeyemi fan! When I first posted about White is for Witching, several other bloggers read it and didn't care for it, so I felt a bit bad. hehe But that leaves more Oyeyemi for us!
@Eva No problem - thanks for the suggestion! I know I'll be reading more from Oyeyemi in 2012. I'll have to give White is for Witching a try.
I will start reading Mr. Fox tomorrow. Looking forward to it. Have a Happy New Year!
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