In [Oyeyemi's] hands, the realm of lore and the so-called 'real world' exert a gravitational pull on each other, resulting in unexpected amalgamations of Bluebeard and Yoruban folk tales, Tinder and talking dolls, and complex, unconventional characters who tug the trajectory of recognizable tales out of the ruts and grooves of a well-traveled road. With her newest novel, Oyeyemi ventures away from these familiar shapes, though not from the playful reinvention of genres and tropes ... The first half of the novel borrows its momentum from the train itself, barreling forward toward an unknown destination of unknown import, lurching back and forth between the interiors of eccentrically decorated train cars and the playfully enigmatic interiorities of the characters. Oyeyemi is a master of leaps of thought and inference, of shifty velocity, and the story’s long setup has the discombobulating quality of walking through a moving vehicle while carrying a full-to-the-brim cup of very hot tea ... The lure of real connection and real resolution, their transformative power turning an obscure object of pursuit into a steadfast counterpart, moves the cast of characters toward denouement in much the same way that a death motivates investigation in a locked-door murder mystery ... at the book’s end the story lands more Patricia Highsmith than Agatha Christie: a maze of identity and desire that has an ending, but not a solution. Every piece of the puzzle falls into place, but the picture is never made whole. Perhaps this is Oyeyemi’s point: To be at peace with the vagaries of human connection, you have to learn to find the wholeness in every part.
Delightfully weird and deliciously eccentric ... When I started reading, I found myself quite lost and without solid footing in the plotlines. My advice for readers is: like any train ride, let it take you where it wants to go. The structure of the novel definitely mirrors a meandering train track, but always with purpose and forward momentum. The sentences themselves are delightful puzzles to solve as they unfold, and I argue it’s worth the patience to see how paragraphs build...unfolds slowly, satisfyingly, and it’s not until the very end that we discover how it ties into the main storyline. The anticipation is much like boarding a train without a set destination and being rewarded for your trust ... conveys a feeling similar to a fever dream ... For some readers this level of confusion might become frustrating, but for others, the temptation for a reveal will keep the pages turning ... There are both tender and tense moments. Oyeyemi’s choice to have Otto narrate the story seems fitting, as we’re able to hear the sarcasm, wit, and loftiness of his voice, even as it’s clear he is confused or frightened by the happenings on the train. His love for Xavier is palpable, and his unreliability as a narrator makes the strange, hazy-faced man who attacks him and then ultimately jumps off the train a questionable reality. Otto, who is a self-proclaimed hypnotist, is the type of narrator who you both care for and mistrust in equal measures. The whole novel is quite unnerving, and it’s due in large part to Oyeyemi’s choice to conceal the truth, to keep you interested, eager to figure out the mystery ... As with most of Oyeyemi’s books, she asks you to have confidence in her craft and follow her through to the end. The conclusion especially picks up pace, like a speeding train taking curves much too quickly, the scenery out the window changing as drastically as the events upon the page. In the end, there are a few disjointed events and surprise appearances, but what else would one expect on such an extraordinary journey?
... a hurtling hothouse of a novel ... It’s all so drenched in quirk and whimsy, the stuff of Wes Anderson fever dreams. But, unlike Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, the legacy of empire is wild and wakeful on Oyeyemi’s train, not just elaborate wallpaper ... lurches in and out of time and memory, accumulating symbols and backstories like clues to a grand whodunnit...Whether that missive delights or maddens will depend entirely on the reader ... By the time Oyeyemi’s wilfully disproportionate train has stopped, a unifying character has appeared in silhouette: the artist who painted those shapeshifting canvases. As his connection to our cast is drawn out, so is a parable of connection, of the ways we shapeshift to fulfil each other’s desires. Peaces turns the existential terror of feeling unseen into a corporeal reality ... continues Oyeyemi’s career-long project of helping us to unsee – unsnarling the neural knots that childhood fairytales tied in us: those tales of sovereignty and dominion, of limp princesses and their flaxen-haired suitors, of snowy purity and moral absolutes. White-on-white ... What we lose in orientation in this novel, we gain in a kind of merciless velocity. It’s hard not to feel like a passenger aboard this book, a little queasy from watching the narrative blur and judder. But for all of her twee excesses, there are few writers who can match Oyeyemi’s creative glee. On a first read, Peaces works best when you stop trying to solve it, and instead surrender to that exuberance. Far better to sit back and revel in this book’s queer sensualities and the sherbet fizz of its wit; to enjoy the company of platinum-furred, jewel-hoarder Árpád, lithe as Nijinsky reincarnate; or perhaps try to imagine a melody that makes a 'theremin sound as if it was looking back on a long life of crime'. Then when it’s over, return – clear-eyed – for a second trip.
Helen Oyeyemi is a writer of singular genius. Her work blends magic realism, slipstream, and literary fiction into disorienting, beautiful narratives open to both terror and love ... Relax into the whimsicality, though, and Peaces becomes recognizable as a Wes Anderson movie stripped of its dedication to whiteness and fully awake to the complicities and consequences of imperialism. In spite of the steampunk-y, fantastic details, the novel is anchored in contemporary England. It’s multiethnic and socially tangled, fully technologized, and one step away from the world through which The Lucky Day travels. Outside the windows is a landscape as unreliable and unmappable as any Oyeyemi has yet summoned ... Oyeyemi’s craft improves with each successive novel. Her skill and style recall Borges’ fables or Kazuo Ishiguro’s recent fairy tales, but her writing may ultimately surpass both of those established masters. Peaces is a book to be read over, year after year, and marveled at. If it doesn’t become an acknowledged masterpiece, it will only be because each reader decides to keep this treasure private, only for herself.
Helen Oyeyemi's command of magical realism is practically mind altering in her unforgettable seventh novel ... sprawls into astonishing, and even frightful, territories of the interior, more so than new horizons abroad ... Oyeyemi may appear to direct this beguiling novel off the rails at times, but its manic twists never spin out. They instead serve to reorient the gravity of the situation ... A superbly fun Rorschach test of staggering creativity, Peaces asks how much attention one person can spare another in an increasingly chaotic world.
... a deeply, intoxicatingly romantic novel interrupted by occasional scenes of Benny Hill farce ... Peaces is elliptical and strange and funny, and despite its Wes Anderson–like setting, it’s a very bleak little cautionary tale. It proposes that failing to grasp someone’s essential self is pernicious and contagious, that we mistake outlines and portraits for bodies and souls. This train story becomes a comedy of manners built around the gravest possible breach of etiquette: refusing, literally, to see someone.
... a short, beguiling, and outlandish story about the inner turmoil that comes with not being seen, both figuratively and literally ... [a] delightfully weird novel ... it’s clear that Oyeyemi enjoyed creating this impossibly strange but wonderful environment. There is so much packed into Peaces for such a short novel, so much that is beautiful and bewildering. The abrupt ending, almost perfunctory in how quickly it comes and goes, is my only quibble. I could have easily spent another fifty or more pages with Oyeyemi’s eccentric cast of characters and their adventures on the magnificent The Lucky Day.
... weird and wonderful ... unwinds a story that illumines the ways that past experiences continue to impose upon the present, shaping what each of us accepts as reality ... It is fair to say this book will not appeal to everyone. Some readers might be put off by the manner in which the story wanders through a string of seemingly nonsensical experiences that evoke many unanswered questions. Be aware, too, of the coarse language sprinkled throughout. In the hands of a less talented writer, it all might seem like a surreal soup of imaginings ... But Oyeyemi skillfully crafts a most creative story that evokes life’s deeper questions. She infuses the tale with references to music, photography, and painting, and with cultural touch points as seemingly random as the Brontë Sisters, the Beach Boys, and Converse sneakers ... In the midst of this delightful concoction, she examines the enduring power of experiences and the impressions that we make upon one another. Through the seemingly random adventures of Otto and Xavier, she illuminates how past experiences seldom remain in the past. They become part of who we are in the present and, to look upon the union of the two protagonists, part of what binds us to one another ... For those willing to let go and follow this story wherever it leads, floating through the parts that appear without explanation, stringing together details as they are revealed, the reward will be worth the adventure.
Books are made to get lost in, but the maze of Helen Oyeyemi's brain seems to grow more complicated by the novel. No complaints here. The Gingerbread author returns with the enchanting Peaces ... If you know Oyeyemi, you know this ride will give Snowpiercer a run for its money in the weirdness department. And sure enough, the mostly vacant train, populated by a few odd passengers and some mystically tinged worlds, provides the setting for the most surprising, confounding, and oddly insightful couple's trip in recent literary history.
Reading Helen Oyeyemi's Peaces is like walking into a bizarre interstitial space between a surrealist narrative populated by mongooses and strange characters and the realm of classic Agatha Christie-esque mysteries that take place on trains to undisclosed locations. If that doesn't make much sense, you're beginning to get an idea of what this novel is like ... a humorous mystery about too many things. At its core is Oyeyemi's brilliant prose, which is the only constant and quickly emerges as the main reason to keep reading when things get weird. Her voice and wit shine in the dialogue as well as the descriptions, events, letters, and literary curlicues that adorn the novel. Questions almost always lead to stories and most descriptions weave in and out of the characters' past and present in unpredictable ways that enrich our knowledge of who they are ,,, For every hint or answer, Oyeyemi adds three questions. While the every-growing list of characters and uncertainties keeps the pages turning, the many branches that sprout rhizomatically from the story's center eventually overpower everything else. The characters are funny and likeable, the descriptions superb, and the dialogue hilarious, but the way the tale moves between past and present and the many memories that pop up soon become distracting and make for a disjointed read ... Oyeyemi is a gifted writer with a penchant for the outlandish, so Peaces remains engaging...But it's also fragmented and at times confusing, and not in the best way ... Ultimately, Oyeyemi's storytelling skills, keen observations, and the beautiful way in which she crafts unique, uncanny characters save this from being a befuddling mystery with too much going on. However, readers should be aware of the story's rambling nature and disconcerting zigzags before delving into its many mysteries.
Helen Oyeyemi’s Peaces is a brilliantly assembled fever dream of a novel. What begins as a foggy series of stories takes shape into something truly radiant as both readers and characters alike embark on the trip of a lifetime ... an unforgettable journey ... Oyeyemi’s talent for worldbuilding is perhaps unmatched; her storytelling is on its own tier ... Like expanses of window-framed landscapes, Oyeyemi’s descriptions are delightfully meandering. The tone of her writing is both whimsical and discomforting ... Peaces is a wild (train) ride that is just about impossible to disembark.
Much of the success of Oyeyemi’s narrative will hinge upon a reader’s willingness to buy into the oddity and bizarre scenarios the author infuses into the fibre of her story — everything from a woman who hides emeralds in her mouth and chokes on them in her sleep to a couple of blank white paintings that divulge figures to their viewers in a kind of trompe l’oeil ... At its core, Peaces asks what happens when we are unable to recognize the most significant figures in our lives. Does that make us insane, or just human? ... Little is explicitly stated in Peaces; Oyeyemi has no interest in making things easy for us.
It may be laden with whimsical details and witticisms, but the opening chapter of Helen Oyeyemi’s Peaces feels grounded given her penchant for disorienting fables ... this smart, inventive narrative moves with antic momentum, darting between past and present, and from storyline to storyline ... One of the joys of Oyeyemi’s work is its quicksilver ability to resist straightforward interpretation. The train was once used to smuggle tea, for instance, but good luck to any critic seeking to peg this as an allegory about empire. Similarly, while answers to its puzzles generally materialise, they’re almost beside the point in a text that responds to every question with a story, followed by more questions ... While the title alludes to an Emily Dickinson poem, it’s impossible not to think of it in a different spelling. Ultimately, the book’s 'pieces' come together more in the way of glass beads in a kaleidoscope – transiently, but forming dazzling patterns with each turn.
Truly, God bless Helen Oyeyemi ... her latest novel, Peaces, is very very weird ... But just because Oyeyemi’s source genre is cozy doesn’t mean the things she does with it are. This is a playful book, but it’s also a profoundly unsettling one ... Peaces moves slowly. But for the reader who might be tempted to find this lack of narrative urgency frustrating, Oyeyemi offers an illustrative fable in the book’s first few pages. She describes the audience at a marionette show, where there are four different ways of enjoying the performance — all of which map neatly onto different ways of reading a book ... Watching the strings while reading a Helen Oyeyemi book means watching the sentences, which are glorious ... As mysteries go, this one seems a little incoherent. But Oyeyemi imbues it with a creeping existential dread: a horror at the idea of this disappearance, at making yourself into exactly what someone wants, abasing yourself for them, groveling at their feet — and then becoming unseen ... Oyeyemi has provided quite a set of strings to track, even if she persists in frustrating all our wishes for resolution as Peaces comes to a close.
The train proves to be a feast of wonders, complete with elaborate cars boasting numerous delights, from a full library to a bountiful kitchen to an overflowing mail room ... Oyeyemi (Gingerbread, 2019) has once again crafted a layered modern-day fairy tale replete with interlinked stories and unexpected connections among its vibrant characters.
Oyeyemi imbues Otto and Xavier's journey with her familiar flair for the fantastic, from wily pet mongooses to trainwide bazaars to men with hazy faces. Yet, as Oyeyemi once again pushes the boundaries of the novel, each of the spaces, times, and characters here are as loose, fragmentary, and un-pin-down-able as the man Otto is unable to see ... A surrealist tale of love, heartbreak, and being haunted by the past.
Curious characters, strange events, and mysteries abound in Oyeyemi’s delightfully bonkers latest ... Though capped by a somewhat disjointed and confusing finale, the narrative is bolstered by its underlying blend of humor and suspense, as well as Oyeyemi’s ability to skillfully thread together the lives of her characters and show how they’ve been shaped into the people they are today. Despite its problems, this exciting and inventive novel brims with unusual insights.
Readers of Helen Oyeyemi’s latest mind-teaser will know they’re in for an unusual experience ... uncommonly inventive ... The story’s second half is convoluted, and Oyeyemi tends to overwrite ... But fans of the British writer’s previous work, such as the PEN award-winning What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, will enjoy this novel’s surreal twists and imaginative scenarios. Peaces is like the work of a hypnotist: Those open to its allure will inevitably fall under its thrall.
