21st Century Literature discussion

Here's the free-for-all thread for discussing the entire book. Rather than throwing out discussion questions, I'm just going to leave it open for whatever people would like to post about their reading. I have a few things I'd like to hear people's opinions on, so will throw those out if things are slow, and everyone else please feel free to do the same.

Just getting started. I'm enjoying the flits in time, picked out in vivid phrases. It seems to echo Miranda 's mental life.

Does anyone understand Oyeyemi's occasional skips of paragraph indents? Unlike Ali Smith, she doesn't seem to feel above the use of other orthography.

Hi, Mark, glad you're here. I was starting to get nervous I'd get lost in the walls, alone in this house.

Can you give an example of a skipped indent? I'm reading the e-book, so my formatting may be different. I'm assuming the print edition has the same paragraph breaks where there's a word or two that finishes the prior paragraph and starts the next one? An example:

"...she heard the clatter of cutlery, she heard the whir of

the lift

broke down in the night. No one knew what time..."

No, that's a pretty clear (and cute) scene break. (In the print version, it's even clearer since the linking word is centered.)

The ones I'm seeing are like this (here, on p15):

--->The first thing Lily showed us inside was the dusty marble fireplace. It was so big that Miri could crawl into the place where the wood was supposed to sit. She tried to make crackling, fire-like noises
(when we were ten I always knew the meaning of the sounds she made, even when they were unsuccessful)
but ended up choking on a puff of dust that bolted down the chimney. Next Lily showed us the little ration-book larder behind the kitchen; the shelves were wonky and the room had a floor so crazily checked that none of us could walk in a straight line in there. I remember how brilliant I thought it all was; there was nothing for it but to jump in the air and yell and kick and make kung-fu noises.
--->Miri and I conferred and decided that we liked the tallness of the house, the way the walls shoot up and up with the certainty of stone, ...

Er, I'm afraid conveying the look in the word-wrap universe is a bit of a stretch. In this case, it signals a slight digression, but in the example on P41, I just don't see why she would do it.

On another note, I keep waiting for Shelly Duvall to turn up, especially after the haunted lift...

Mark

Oh, The Shining is strong in this one...

Poor doomed Miri. Ore could have saved her; she's the only person that succeeds in getting Miri to eat to satisfy hunger, and she has knowledge of the defeat of a soucouyant that holds out the possibility of overcoming the posession. Unfortunately, it looks like she is getting sucked in to Miri's haunting: she has lost so much weight in one term that her classmates (P171) and parents immediately notice (P183).

Oyeyemi's prose has some wonderfully poetic images at times, the "vast white curved blocks like severed feet shuffling across the water," and at other times conjures horrible images, as on P198, where Ore is dissolving and shredding herself on the bath towels.

The only thing that promotes disbelief is that Tijana and Miri get into Cambridge. I didn't notice any groundwork that Tijana had the focus on academic success that Ore had.

Mark wrote: "Poor doomed Miri. Ore could have saved her; she's the only person that succeeds in getting Miri to eat to satisfy hunger, and she has knowledge of the defeat of a soucouyant that holds out the possibility of overcoming the posession."

I think you're right Marc, although the night when Ore tries to fight the soucouyant and finds Miranda / The Goodlady desperately trying to sew herself back into her false skin makes me think it may have been futile effort at that point. After freeing Ore, Sade announces she is leaving as well. I wonder if the voice telling Sade to "wait" had silenced at that point (who do you think that voice was?)

I can't say I saw any hint of Tijuana's academic pursuits one way or the other, until their teacher's announcement of who had offers from the colleges. She is initially presented as something of a mean girl, but her experiences in Dover certainly justify her level of anger.

What do you make of this, from the day when everyone gets their school results "Tijana was nearby, with her mother. Tijana’s mother was radiant with smiles, but Tijana’s eyes were red and her wrists stuck out of her black sleeves with alarming scrawniness." I get the idea Tijana's mother is happier about her Cambridge acceptance that Tijana herself is.

What role do you think Tijana played in the book in general? I get the idea she's meant to be something of a counterpoint to Miri. Then there's the exorcism water that she gives Ore; which Ore splashes towards Miri without making contact. It's like a Chekhov's gun that someone fires, misses, then throws away.

Mark wrote: "No, that's a pretty clear (and cute) scene break. (In the print version, it's even clearer since the linking word is centered.)

The ones I'm seeing are like this (here, on p15):

The linking word in centered in the ebook, as well, I just couldn't make it center in the GR box.

The odd indenting you point out is the same. I had assumed it was an ebook formatting error, but interesting to see it's deliberate. I don't know what to make of it.

Yes about the lift! As Marc confirmed, The Shining is strong in this one.

After wandering confused through the first few pages of this book (my first by the young author), I was delighted to find it mostly an entertaining, accessible and accomplished work. It uses suspense, emotion, humor, old fairy tales, supernatural forces and psychology to build the coming-of-age story of a fragile young woman living in a large haunted house with her twin brother and widowed dad. Though I seldom read Gothic novels, this one seems to me to fit more into the “casual horror” genre that one character ascribes to Poe.

Miranda, the teenage central character, is mourning the loss of her photojournalist mother to a shooting on assignment in Haiti. When not dreaming of her mother and great-grandmother, she seems to eat little but white chalk most of the time. Unluckily for her, the ancestral family home is in Dover, famously well-stocked with the stuff. Throughout the book, her progressive weight loss threatens to render her as transparent as the ghostly relatives populating the big house. As her eating disorder (pica) worsens, the family tries different means to help her, from sending her off for months to a clinic to her dad’s culinary variations at home.

Admission to Cambridge seems to offer a hopeful set of new possibilities for her. At her interview she befriends an intimidated applicant, Ore, in a humorous scene where Miri persuades her not to bolt before her own interview. When they later become a couple, we are treated to some especially well-written and tender descriptions of first love. All the sadder when the “wronged” Dover house calls Miri home and scares off Ore.

The running themes of immigration and intolerance help the book to avoid a too-personal focus. Dover is one of the UK’s prime destinations for new undocumented migrants, the family has a Nigerian housekeeper, Sade, and Miri is threatened by a local Kosovar girl, Tijana. Miri’s college girlfriend, Ore, is also from Nigeria, and we get a too-brief glimpse of her working class home life, where xenophobic BNP leaflets regularly pop up. None of this is surprising, given Oyeyemi is herself Nigerian-born, and grew up in an England torn by disagreements over immigration.

Parts of the book seemed to distract more than advance the story. The frequent narrator switches were, on one hand, welcome variations of viewpoint. But to me they seemed at times random and careless, drifting from Eliot to Ore to an omniscient third person to the Dover house itself. Eliot is dispatched to a South African internship about which we hear little. The knife-wielding Kosovar, Tijana, just happens to get accepted to Cambridge too, but for no clear purpose to the story. I am also tempted to question the recurring role of apples, poisoned or otherwise. But at least it moved me to skim through a library copy of Snow White to recall the references.

But overall, I thought this was a well-written, intriguing and thoughtful book. Helen Oyeyemi was just 25, newly graduated from Cambridge, when it was published. But far from being a debut work, it was her third novel and shows all the signs of a mature, skillful and original author.

Nice recap Gregory! It felt like we'd both read the same book. :-)

Dover well-stocked with chalk indeed! Was it her mother or grandmother that also had Pica? Perhaps in both cases, it was more a reflection of the house's method of control. I also liked Ore's impatience with Sade's assumption of solidarity.

Mark wrote: "Nice recap Gregory! It felt like we'd both read the same book. :-)

Dover well-stocked with chalk indeed! Was it her mother or grandmother that also had Pica? Perhaps in both cases, it was more a ..."

Yes, good recap, although I still feel Tijana has more of a purpose in the story, even if I can't quite capture it. Perhaps as something of a counterpoint to Miri? Someone whose outsider status is imposed from without rather than within?

And, Mark, it was her grandmother, Anna Good / The Goodlady who originally had pica. The book was originally published in Britain with the title "Pie-Kah", which is how Miri pronounces it to herself in the section entitled, not surprisingly, "Pica". Elliot defines it therein as "an appetite for .... things that don't nourish", which seems like a not too obscure metaphor for the fatal attraction of the successive Silvers to the bewitchments of the house.

Where did you see Ore's impatience with Sade? My main recollection is their first meeting, when Sade tells Ore to go home, then closes the door in her face.

Whitney wrote: "Mark wrote: "Nice recap Gregory! It felt like we'd both read the same book. :-)

Dover well-stocked with chalk indeed! Was it her mother or grandmother that also had Pica? Perhaps in both cases, i..."

I too think Tijana could have played a more important role in the book, but felt the author left her underdeveloped. Maybe her street-fighting ferocity was matched by a fierce intelligence and character that explains admission to Cambridge?

Gregory wrote: "Whitney wrote: "Mark wrote: "Nice recap Gregory! It felt like we'd both read the same book. :-)

Dover well-stocked with chalk indeed! Was it her mother or grandmother that also had Pica? Perhaps ..."

I really wasn't taken aback by her getting into Cambridge. Immigrants in anti-immigrant towns have to put up a tough facade, that doesn't mean they don't come from families that put a premium on education.

Whitney, about the Sade/ Ore conflict, I remember noticing it, but I didn't record the page, and the book is back at the library. Ooops.

Mark

Mark wrote: "Whitney, about the Sade/ Ore conflict, I remember noticing it, but I didn't record the page, and the book is back at the library. Ooops."

I think I found the exchange you referred to (ebooks are great for searching out text). You're right, there's definite push-back from Ore against the assumed solidarity. I suspect Ore had a different idea by the end, after finding that the house (like society) didn't much appreciate their differences, and after Sade so mater-of-factly came to her rescue.

“Will you tell Miranda?” She wasn’t talking about the story I’d just told her.
“Why shouldn’t I?” I said.
“She wouldn’t understand. She’s different from us.”
I resented the “us.”
“Different from us how? As in, we are clairvoyant and she is not?”
“I’m sorry,” Sade said, eyeing me. “You are a maid of Kent, are you not?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m not mocking you,” she continued. “I believe it. But does she believe it?”
“Who are you talking about, Miranda, or the soucouyant?”
“Maid of Kent, do you want to know what your name means?”
“No, thank you.”
“It means . . . ”
I put my hands over my ears and growled, but I still heard. She said my name meant “friend.”

Yeah ebooks are great, except my library uses Overdrive, which inexplicably doesn't offer searching or even small copying. Sigh. I think you found the passage.

The more I read by Oyeyemi (I think I've now read 4 of her books) and it wasn't evident to me in the first books I've read, but something about her books has been reminding me of someone, and I think it may be Sarah Waters, but I'm not sure why (this one in particular isn't like, but reminds me somehow of The Little Stranger). Am I insane? Wrong? Anyone know what I'm subconsciously noticing?

This is my first by Oyeyemi, but I'm more familiar with Waters. Waters certainly isn't afraid to portray the human side of dealing with supernatural events. In Affinity, her protagonist is treated much like Miri (the difference being that Miss Pryor's supernatural experience has different outcomes).

Yeah - I'm not sure what it is. There are obvious parallels, but I feel like I'm reacting to something I'm unaware of. Maybe it's a supernatural experience all on its own!

It's probably just two writers I like who merge realistic fiction with a dose of speculative/spooky stuff - turns out I do like that style quite a bit.

I get a little Sarah Waters vibe as well, now that you mention it.

Whitney wrote: "I get a little Sarah Waters vibe as well, now that you mention it."

I feel like I'd have to closely read two of their books right in a row or together to figure out what it is, and I'm not sure I can commit to that right now, but I'm going to just associate the two in my brain and since they're both sure to put more books out, I'll maybe get a chance to figure it out.