Nobody else's book club: Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi
I expected very little from this book. I was not even expecting to finish it at all. You see, I got it from my local library, where it was labelled as romance. And, what you do not know, but I know all too well, is that, when it comes to fiction, my local library specialises mostly either in crime novels or in novels with nobility titles in the title (you know the kind...). It is awfully difficult to find anything worth reading in it. So I was really surprised to find out that Mr. Fox is a very nice read and Helen Oyeyemi a very good writer.
It is not easy reading—it has a complex, very fragmented structure—but this actually makes it quite entertaining. It is formed of short stories that are connected by a single theme (at least most of them are, some seemed to me to be somewhat out of place). These stories span different times, places (continents) and genres, which, together with Oyeyemi's whimsical style, is what makes them so compelling. They are mostly fantastic, their main inspiration being European folk stories—and maybe African (Yoruba in particular) ones, but I would not know. Some of these stories, such as Bluebeard, Fitcher's Bird, Mr. Fox, Reynardine or Reynard, are explicitly referred to in the book.
Oyeyemi came up with a very original device to glue these stories together: St. John Fox is a writer—probably a crime novel writer because he is accused at the beginning of the book of killing too many women. The accuser is Mary Foxe, Mr. Fox's imaginary muse. Angry with the misogyny of Mr. Fox's stories, Mary decides to start writing her own. Her purpose, to teach Mr. Fox how to respect, not only the female characters in his stories, but women in general, including his neglected wife, Daphne. By the end of the book, not only St. John and Mary's stories are included, Daphne is telling her own stories too.
The underlying subject of the book, misogyny in literature (in general, not only fairy tales), could not be more relevant today. Oyeyemi, with extraordinary wit and irony, succeeds in exposing the way misogyny encroaches, not only literature, but everyday life sometimes in the most subtle ways, without being sanctimonious in the slightest.
Just a few weeks ago, I had just read another reference to the Bechdel test in the media, when it occurred to me that the real problem the test reveals is how very little are men truly interested in women. They may be interested in sex with women, in playing the knight-in-a-shining-armour with them, and so on, but they are not really interested in them. I say that, because either in film or literature, I am often the most interested in male characters with substance. And, there is plenty of evidence, this is also often the case with other women (Jane Austen and her janeites come to mind as exceptions): we love reading books and seeing films about men. To be fair, there are also plenty of exceptions of men who are interested in women (Tolstoy, Ibsen, and Flaubert come to mind), but that is just what the problem is, they are exceptions. I think of the many times I have heard with bafflement a man complaining of how difficult it is to understand women. In my experience, men and women are not that different and the reason men can understand each other better is not that they are more similar to each other at all, but because they have given a lot more thought to the inner life of each other than to those of the women around them. I think this is exactly what Mary Fox is trying to teach St. John; to think of women and Daphne in particular, in order to save his literature and his marriage. And maybe also, to save himself from a meaningless life. As Socrates, or was it Plato?, so well put it: "An unexamined life is not worth living".
It is not easy reading—it has a complex, very fragmented structure—but this actually makes it quite entertaining. It is formed of short stories that are connected by a single theme (at least most of them are, some seemed to me to be somewhat out of place). These stories span different times, places (continents) and genres, which, together with Oyeyemi's whimsical style, is what makes them so compelling. They are mostly fantastic, their main inspiration being European folk stories—and maybe African (Yoruba in particular) ones, but I would not know. Some of these stories, such as Bluebeard, Fitcher's Bird, Mr. Fox, Reynardine or Reynard, are explicitly referred to in the book.
Oyeyemi came up with a very original device to glue these stories together: St. John Fox is a writer—probably a crime novel writer because he is accused at the beginning of the book of killing too many women. The accuser is Mary Foxe, Mr. Fox's imaginary muse. Angry with the misogyny of Mr. Fox's stories, Mary decides to start writing her own. Her purpose, to teach Mr. Fox how to respect, not only the female characters in his stories, but women in general, including his neglected wife, Daphne. By the end of the book, not only St. John and Mary's stories are included, Daphne is telling her own stories too.
The underlying subject of the book, misogyny in literature (in general, not only fairy tales), could not be more relevant today. Oyeyemi, with extraordinary wit and irony, succeeds in exposing the way misogyny encroaches, not only literature, but everyday life sometimes in the most subtle ways, without being sanctimonious in the slightest.
Just a few weeks ago, I had just read another reference to the Bechdel test in the media, when it occurred to me that the real problem the test reveals is how very little are men truly interested in women. They may be interested in sex with women, in playing the knight-in-a-shining-armour with them, and so on, but they are not really interested in them. I say that, because either in film or literature, I am often the most interested in male characters with substance. And, there is plenty of evidence, this is also often the case with other women (Jane Austen and her janeites come to mind as exceptions): we love reading books and seeing films about men. To be fair, there are also plenty of exceptions of men who are interested in women (Tolstoy, Ibsen, and Flaubert come to mind), but that is just what the problem is, they are exceptions. I think of the many times I have heard with bafflement a man complaining of how difficult it is to understand women. In my experience, men and women are not that different and the reason men can understand each other better is not that they are more similar to each other at all, but because they have given a lot more thought to the inner life of each other than to those of the women around them. I think this is exactly what Mary Fox is trying to teach St. John; to think of women and Daphne in particular, in order to save his literature and his marriage. And maybe also, to save himself from a meaningless life. As Socrates, or was it Plato?, so well put it: "An unexamined life is not worth living".
Next book: A complete change of mood—I am reading "Auto-da-Fé" by Elias Canetti.
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