What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (Paperback)

from bookishtexpat

Helen Oyeyemi brings brilliance and quirk in her collection of short stories, and I was just as delighted as when I read "Boy, Snow, Bird." Some of the stories were sad, others were angry, and still others were as delightfully complicated as reality...with a magical realistic twist. Some of the s...

from nancyjean19

I really enjoyed two of these stories – one about a puppet school, and one about teenagers reacting to a disturbing video online – liked a few more, and couldn't connect with a couple of them. I like magical realism but not when I feel like it's telling a story in an old-fashioned, once-upon-a-ti...

from msf59

"I read without stopping to the end, as if somebody were chasing me through the pages with a butcher's knife." "A library at night is full of sounds: The unread books can't stand it any longer and announce their contents, some boasting, some shy, some devious." I have wanted to read [[Helen Oyeye...

from ozzer

This collection originally attracted me because of all the glowing reviews that it received. After reading a few stories, I was tempted to quit primarily because of their nonsensical quality. Yet a persistent feeling that I was missing something important kept nagging. After finishing and a few d...

from RandyMetcalfe

In this series of loosely connected stories, Helen Oyeyemi demonstrates her mastery of a distant and distancing style of writing. Both place and characterization are vague. Gender assignments are unspecified (typically). Emotion is muted. And standard rules of cause and effect may not apply. The ...