First impressions review: Peaces, by Helen Oyeyemi
I read Oyeyemi’s ‘Gingerbread’ last year and loved it, so I was excited to hear about a new book of hers featuring the adventures of a pair of “not-honeymoon honeymooners” and their pet mongoose on a mysterious train. I soon discovered that, while ‘Gingerbread’ is quirky magical realism with a bisexual protagonist, this book is full-on surreal with zero confirmed-straight characters…except possibly the mongoose, who does acquire a girlfriend by the end. I’m still processing this novel. I’m not sure if I like it more or less than its predecessor - the plot is much harder to follow, though it might actually have a clearer message. Either way, it was a hell of a ride!
Our narrator, Otto Shin (neé Montague) has recently taken the last name of his partner Francis Xavier Shin – an act they decided was much more meaningful than merely getting married – and still can’t quite believe his luck1. Xavier’s aunt Do Yeon gifts them a pair of train tickets as a not-wedding present. As they and Otto’s mongoose Árpád enter the carriages, it quickly becomes clear that this in no ordinary train. In the dice carriage:
“All the seats and tables were scattered across the ceiling among the luggage racks, looking very much as if they’d settled there after the train had undertaken a particularly vigorous loop-the-loop… Árpád trekked up the wall, did a tabletop dash across the ceiling, subjected us to a somewhat professorial gaze, as if to say, ‘And that’s how exploring is done, kids,’…”
Their compartment is in the clock carriage, which they soon realize has no clocks or light-switches, forcing one to feel time by the change in the sun. There is also a greenhouse car, and a sauna car, and more. As the train begins to move, they cross landscapes that make them seriously doubt that they are still in England. The pair theoretically have the train to themselves, but Xavier thinks he has spotted the train’s mysterious owner and resident, Ava Kapoor. She held up a sign, but since he isn’t sure if it said “Hello” or “Help”, they decide to look for her.
1. “I’d managed to accept with sedate joy, like a person who was in a normal amount of love. I might even have managed to ask if he was sure this was what he wanted. Not at all like the real me, who’d been putting my first name and his surname together over and over on various pieces of scrap paper ever since I’d met him.”
While searching, Otto meets a woman named Laura De Souza who, while outwardly friendly, really doesn’t want him to talk to Ava. He does find her, and they eventually meet Ava's girlfriend, Allegra Yu, as well. Laura and Allegra alternate driving the train and are very protective of Ava. The reason for this proves to be that Ava is set to inherit quite a lot of money on her next birthday, if she can be proven to be sane. For some reason they all decided that the best way to maintain mental equilibrium would be to live on an extremely strange train and not interact with anyone else! The only reason- apart from that decision - to doubt Ava’s sanity is that she was literally never able to see her benefactor’s son, Premsyl2. Allegra could, but found Prem deeply weird and unsettling. A surviving self-portrait reveals a connection to the passengers: Otto once ran into a burning building because he saw someone with that face in the window, but found only an empty suit of clothes. Xavier also met Laura when they were kids during a different weird train incident. At the same time, the pair are beginning to suspect that an overly solicitous ex of Xavier was the one who suggested this train journey to his aunt. He was, Xavier notes, the sort of person who can make you feel like shit by never getting mad no matter how much you screw up. In fact, both Otto and Xavier have ex-boyfriends who bear a certain resemblance to Prem; Not in their personalities or looks, which are all completely different, but in having a certain “otherworldly try-hard” vibe. But what do these people actually want of the travelers or their hosts?
2. I was wondering why there were so many references to the Czech Republic in this book and ‘Gingerbread’. But apparently that’s where the author (who was born in Nigeria and grew up in the UK) finally found a place that feels like home!
Suddenly finding yourself “invisible” to someone you really want in your life – or even the thought of that happening - is of course a very painful thing.
“Suppose your finger passed through the shoulder you’d presumed to tap…as if that shoulder were a mere hologram? Let’s just suppose and suppose and suppose, and never find out for ourselves what life turns into after that decisive a failure to connect.”
At one point, Ava confesses that she’s worried that, when this is all over, Allegra and Laura are going to leave her for each other. Her main evidence for this is that they never flirt in front of her – which might sound nuts to some readers, but Otto explains that there are a million ways for friends to accidentally seem flirty, and therefore never doing so (at least in front of someone who might be hurt by it) must be deliberate. He also is worried that Xavier is going to realize at some point that Otto’s not good enough for him. However, though this is something the jealous Prem-like exes can’t understand, some level of imperfection may be necessary for love. Xavier notes in a letter to Ava that Otto lies all the time in words but is unusually truthful in actions:
“Otto does kindness while attempting meanness. He empathizes while affecting apathy…Otto Shin does all he can at the same time as firmly denying that he’s doing anything, or that there’s anything he can do.”
Anyway, that’s my best guess: That this book is really about the importance of being seen, and how the way other people see us can affect how we see ourselves and even our sense of our own reality.
Overall recommendation: If you don’t like stories that operate on “dream logic”, best give this one a miss. But if you like chewing on a bit of symbolism or find that you can do without a crystal-clear plot and set of motivations so long as the writing evokes feeling and atmosphere – give this a try!
