The Opposite House (27 page)

Thank you
Robin Wade
for keeping everything together.

Thank you
Juliet Lapidos
for your attentive reading, especially re Aaron.

Thank you
Alexandra Pringle,
you are the king, the king.

Beatrice Monti della Corte Rezzori,
thank you . . .

Thank you for feedback and general jest,
Antosca.

Pam Hirsh
and
Lorraine Gelsthorpe;
it probably wasn’t apparent on my face at our supervisions, but I think you’re both awesome and idiosyncratic teachers. You helped me to finally find value and interest in SPS. I’ll remember that. Thank you.

Choop/Rupert Myers,
re your removable E drive – I’m much obliged. Also thanks for the very sight of your Florentine jumper.

Claude Willan,
shut your face and you better don’t open it again EVER (also . . . um . . . thank you for the support, the feedback, the sarcasm, the rallying insults).

With equal measures of love and dread, my thanks to

Alex Shilov, Ray/Rachel Douglas-Jones, Hazel Cubbage,
for bringing jokery to Third Year.

Thanks and love to
’Tony Babatunde Oyeyemi.

Thanks and love to
Mummy and Daddy.

All remaining thanks and love (lots!) to
Mary Biola ‘We don’t pick up the phone after seven . . . a.m.’ Oyeyemi.

A Note on the Author

Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and moved to London when she was four. She is the author of a highly acclaimed novel,
The Icarus Girl
, which she wrote while she was still at school, and two plays,
Juniper’s Whitening
and
Victimese
, both published by Methuen.

Also Available by Helen Oyeyemi

The Icarus Girl

‘This is a beautiful, haunting story . . . compelling’
Daily Mail 

Jessamy is a sensitive, whimsical eight-year-old. As the child of an English father and a Nigerian mother, Jess can’t shake off the feeling of being alone, and other kids are wary of her terrified fits of screaming. When she is taken to her mother’s family compound in Nigeria, she encounters Titiola, a ragged little girl her own age. It seems that at last Jess has found someone who will understand her. TillyTilly knows secrets both big and small. But as she shows Jess just how easy it is to hurt those around her, Jess begins to realise that she doesn’t know who TillyTilly is at all.

‘A sharply chilling mystical story’
Independent

‘The Icarus Girl
is an astonishing achievement’
Sunday Telegraph

Praise for
The Opposite House
by Helen Oyeyemi

‘I read
The Opposite House
with a rare happiness. The voice in it is so sure, the risk it takes is so good and the intelligence in it a sheer relief’ Ali Smith

‘Beautiful . . . The poetry of displacement that plays itself out here is powerfully opaque . . . It has the ring of truth’
The Times

‘The Opposite House
is original, memorable and written in a strong voice’
Scotsman

‘A powerful tale of migration, memory and dislocation’
Red Magazine
Book of the Month

‘Her gift for language, her emotional intelligence and most of all her ability to pull you right into the souls of her characters don’t allow the reader to step away . . . Here is language that does justice to the suffering of gods’ Kamila Shamsie,
Guardian

‘Lyrical and deeply textured . . . It repays slow, careful reading, and your copy may, like mine, end up with underlinings and scribbles highlighting juicy phrases’
Sunday Telegraph

‘Oyeyemi has a lovely feel for the sweet, sticky intimacy of family and partnership’
Observer

‘Oyeyemi delicately evokes the endless debate between religious myth and intellectual fact that shapes Maja’s family life’
TLS

‘Oyeyemi deals in wonderfully unsettling images . . . Her raw style is great’
Time Out

‘A poetic, meandering tale about cultural displacement’
Financial Times
Summer Books

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

Copyright © 2007 by Helen Oyeyemi

First published 2007

This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsbury.com

Quotes from a letter from Emily Dickinson to T. W. Higginson, January 1874 reprinted by permission of the publishers from
The Letters of Emily Dickinson
, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1958, 1986, The President and Fellows of Harvard College; 1914, 1924, 1932, 1942 by Martha Dickinson Bianchi; 1952 by Alfred Leete Hampson; 1960 by Mary L. Hampson.

Lines reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from
The Poems of Emily Dickinson
, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978-1-4088-4825-8

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