PARASOL AGAINST THE AXE by Helen Oyeyemi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“Hero's becoming conscious of us. Yes, I do mean you and me. The fourth party that not only calls upon her to be a third-party observer of her own exchanges but consumes the emotion and cognition at least nominally intended for her. And she hates that. Our advantage lessens as, realizing that there is access to restrict, she sets about it without immediate effect. The good news is that she's not going to try to get back at us.”
TITLE—Parasol Against the Axe
AUTHOR—Helen Oyeyemi
PUBLISHED—2024
PUBLISHER—Riverhead Books
GENRE—fiction (sui generis)
SETTING—Prague, well some of them anyway…
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Pragensia & “the Prague book”, sapphic relationships & female friendships, dark & mysterious pasts, stories & perception, connection & estrangement, books & their readers, writers, narrators, characters, etc. etc., city-narrator, residency, immigration, emigration, expatriation, refugee from war / oppression, tourism, relationships with place, regrets, fault, blame, consequences of ill-considered actions, weddings & bridal parties, socialist realist mystery, reader experience & interpretation
“That was how they smuggled conviviality across an otherwise insuperable language barrier. Hynek was the perfect person for Merlin to talk to about Prague and how much he hated this city that had taken his eye. What Merlin felt was both hatred and painful love, the kind the writers of jazz standards know all about: All of me / Why not take all of me? He couldn't risk talking to somebody who could understand what he was saying or offer advice. He was afraid of being advised to commit some deed so brutal that his beloved enemy would take notice of him once and for all; he could resist such thoughts as long as he never heard them from anybody else.”
My thoughts:
I’ve said it before & apparently I’m going to say it again but literally every time I read a new Oyeyemi book it always somehow ends up being the exact book I needed / wanted to read in that moment. Which is especially crazy because they are all so different from each other! In fact in one of their IG Lives promoting their new EP, Akwaeke Emezi said that someone once told them that “their books don’t feel like each other but they all feel like Akwaeke”—which I think also perfectly describes Oyeyemi’s oeuvre as well.
What I loved the most about PARASOL though is its lighthearted cleverness. In an interview with Jennifer Wilson for The New Yorker, Oyeyemi said that she “can feel [her] writing changing,” & having read all of her books I can totally see that. Her last book, PEACES was similarly more lighthearted than her previous books but far more surreal, revolving around themes of trust, knowing, reciprocity, & communication in relationships, whereas PARASOL felt more realist in the sense that we (👀) are (all) present in a very real place, exploring elements & themes that concern all of us as readers & residents, travelers & thinkers.
I’ve only been to Prague once for a couple of days in July 2011 & it still stands out in my mind as one of the few cities I’ve visited that I fell hard for (along with Dublin, Stockholm, & Wellington) & would go back to in a heartbeat. Reading this book was particularly validating & eye-opening in understanding my affinity for Prague since I am so not a city person but as Oyeyemi’s novel proves, there is so much more to Prague than anything anyone has ever tried to define it by. The more I think about what it was about the city that I loved so much, the more deeply personal my ephemeral connection to that place feels.
“Pick ten people, tell each of 'em the same thing—use exactly the same wording each time, then go back and ask of the ten what you told 'em. It's guaranteed you'll hear ten things you never fuckin' said. Hardly anybody talks about what it is they've actually heard or read; we only say what we were thinking about while someone was trying to talk to us. And when all's said and done, that's only natural, isn't it...”
I would recommend this book to readers who are never bothered about things like plot or maps & enjoy getting well & truly lost in both cities & books. This book is best read on the balcony of a small flat overlooking the Vltava with a cold bottle of Kofola & a fresh pack of cigarety sparta.
Final note: A huge thankyou to Riverhead Books for an advanced finished copy of this book!
“The aversion lingered and made its way into lullabies that were sung about the bandits. Sleep, little one, or the shepherd milkmaid bandit will make you walk her Way of the Goat. Go to sleep RIGHT NOW or the mad baker bandit will make you eat bread until you pop ... etc. Those lullabies are extant. When I sang them to my own children, it worked a treat every single time: the kiddies were absolutely bricking it. And so I tip my hat to those three lovers: immortal after all, impossible after all.”
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
CW // sexual content, sex work, death of parent, suicide, nazis, pedophilia (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)
Season: Spring
Further Reading—
Sharma, Ruchira. “Novelist Helen Oyeyemi on Why the City of Prague has Main Character Energy”. Intelligence Squared. Spotify, Feb 14, 2024.
Wilson, Jennifer. “The New Yorker Interview: Helen Oyeyemi Thinks We Should Read More and Stay in Touch Less.” The New Yorker. Mar 3, 2024.
PRAGUE WITH FINGERS OF RAIN by Vítězslav Nezval—TBR
DE PROFUNDIS by Oscar Wilde—TBR
“The Secret Miracle,” by Jorge Luis Borges—TBR
INVISIBLE CITIES by Italo Calvino—TBR
THE GOOD SOLDIER ŠVEJK by Jaroslav Hašek—TBR
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING by Milan Kundera
THE SUICIDE CLUB by Robert Louis Stevenson—TBR “…Florizel, the habitually incognito Prince of Bohemia from three crime stories Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in 1878. Stevenson's Florizel dearly loved to out-pretend a pretender.”
NORTHANGER ABBEY by Jane Austen—“The epigraph was from Austen's Northanger Abbey: Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?”
See my ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ review for NORTHANGER ABBEY here.
IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELLER by Italo Calvino
OUTLINE by Rachel Cusk—TBR
THE END OF MR Y by Scarlett Thomas—TBR
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