Mr. Fox
Helen Oyeyemi, 2011
Penguin Group (USA)
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594486180
Summary
A brilliant and inventive story of love, lies, and inspiration.
Fairy-tale romances end with a wedding, and the fairy tales don't get complicated. In this book, the celebrated writer Mr. Fox can't stop himself from killing off the heroines of his novels, and neither can his wife, Daphne. It's not until Mary, his muse, comes to life and transforms him from author into subject that his story begins to unfold differently.
Mary challenges Mr. Fox to join her in stories of their own devising; and in different times and places, the two of them seek each other, find each other, thwart each other, and try to stay together, even when the roles they inhabit seem to forbid it. Their adventures twist the fairy tale into nine variations, exploding and teasing conventions of genre and romance, and each iteration explores the fears that come with accepting a lifelong bond.
Meanwhile, Daphne becomes convinced that her husband is having an affair, and finds her way into Mary and Mr. Fox's game. And so Mr. Fox is offered a choice: Will it be a life with the girl of his dreams, or a life with an all-too-real woman who delights him more than he cares to admit?
The extraordinarily gifted Helen Oyeyemi has written a love story like no other. Mr. Fox is a magical book, endlessly inventive, as witty and charming as it is profound in its truths about how we learn to be with one another. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 10, 1984
• Where—Nigeria
• Raised—London, England, UK
• Education—Cambridge University
• Awards—Somerset Maughm Award
• Currently—lives in London, England
Helen (oh YAY a mee) Oyeyemi is a British author with five novels to her name. She was born in Nigeria and raised in London, England.
Oyeyemi studied Social and Political Sciences at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, graduating in 2006. While at Cambridge, two of her plays, Juniper's Whitening and Victimese, were performed by fellow students to critical acclaim and subsequently published by Methuen.
Novels
She wrote her first novel, The Icarus Girl, while still at school studying for her A levels at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School.
In 2007 Bloomsbury published her second novel, The Opposite House which is inspired by Cuban mythology.
Her third novel, White is for Witching, described as having "roots in Henry James and Edgar Allan Poe" was published in 2009. It was a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award.
Mr Fox, Oyeyemi's fourth novel was published in 2011. Aimee Bender said in a New York Times review: "Charm is a quality that overflows in this novel." Kirkus Reviews, however thought that while readers might consider Mr. Fox "an intellectual tour de force," they might also find it "emotionally chilly."
Oyeyemi's fith novel, Boy, Snow, Bird, published in 2014, is a retelling of Snow White, set in Massachusetts in the 1950s.
What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, released in 2016, is a collection of intertwined stories, all involving locks and keys.
Extras
• Oyeyemi is a lifelong Catholic who has done voluntary work for CAFOD in Kenya.
• In 2009 Oyeyemi was recognised as one of the women on Venus Zine’s “25 under 25” list.
(Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 2/18/2014.)
Book Reviews
In the folk tale, Mr. Fox lures women into his lair to kill them. Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox used to lure women into his stories and kill them. She, of course, is her own Mr. Fox, and surely she lures us in, too. Not to kill us, not to repel us, but the opposite—to hold us in these stories and give us something along the way, something complicated and genuine. Charm is a quality that overflows in this novel, and it works under its best definition: as a kind of magical attraction and delight. Oyeyemi casts her word-spell, sentence by sentence, story by story, and by the end, the oppressive lair has opened up into a shimmering landscape pulsing with life.
Aimee Bender - New York Times Book Review
[A] postmodern puzzler that, despite its screwball moments, is inspired by the pre-modern: the bloody and bizarre English folk tale "Mister Fox," Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" and the Grimm Brothers' "Fitcher's Bird" and "The Robber Bridegroom"… Violence is never far away in this ambitious effort, but neither is love (romantic, sexual, parental), and Oyeyemi's dazzling, dislocating novel ends with an elemental tale of transformation.
Kerry Fried - Washington Post
This, Oyeyemi’s fourth novel, is also formally her riskiest. Oyeyemi has an eye for the gently perverse, the odd detail that turns the ordinary marvelously, frighteningly strange.... Narrated in an almost childishly rhythmic, simple prose, the stories draw from a wide swath of literary registers—a boy tries to assemble a woman out of art; a vicious Harlequin killer sits chained beneath a lake; a girl in an occupied village rebels against foreign soldiers; a neophyte writer corresponds with an author she admires.... Yet stories, and fairy tales in particular, allow for metamorphosis, and it is through becoming writers and narrators that the women of this story liberate themselves from Mr. Fox’s deadly plotline
Jenny Hendrix - Boston Globe
Heroines don't live happily ever after in Mr. Fox's books because he can't help killing them off. Then his muse, Mary, comes to life and drags him into a world of make-believe that tests both the limits of the genre and the idea of a lifelong bond. Oyeyemi consistently surprises (her White Is for Witching won the 2010 Somerset Maugham Award). Get for discriminating readers and watch where this one goes.
Library Journal
Postmodernist, meta-fictional riffs on classic tales.... The Mr. Fox of the title...novelist who kills off his heroines... is visited with increasing frequency by his imaginary but alluring muse Mary. Mary is dissatisfied with Mr. Fox's treatment of women and challenges him, very vaguely, to a contest.... [F]orget any resemblance to linear logic in what is ultimately a treatise on love.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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