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Helen Oyeyemi was
born in Nigeria in 1984 and moved to London when she was four. She is
the author of The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House, and most
recently, White is for Witching, which won a 2010 Somerset
Maugham Award. Her story My Daughter the Racist was shortlisted
for the 2010 BBC National Short Story Award.
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Interview
with Helen Oyeyemi
The
Short Review:
How long did it take you to write all the stories in your collection?
Helen Oyeyemi: Two years, give or take a
couple of months.
TSR:
Did you
have a collection in mind when you were writing them?
HO: On
and off I thought of Witold Gombrowicz's Bacacay,
Incidences by Daniil Kharms, and The Collected Works of Dorothy Parker,
though that includes her brilliantly unruly book reviews and theatre reviews,
so maybe it doesn't count strictly as a short story collection.
TSR:
How did
you choose which stories to include and in what order?
HO: The
narrative alternates between the short stories and scenes from Mr Fox's "real
life", and each short story seems to me to reflect the mood of the 'real-life'
scene just before it.
TSR:
What
does the word "story"
mean to you?
HO: A
series of events, or at times a single event, with its own particular
sensibility, rules and meanings.
TSR:
Do you have a reader in mind when you write stories?
HO: Always. A
reader who is neither frivolous nor serious, who lives in books with all their
heart, reads things not always for the tale itself but for the way it's told,
and frequently falls in love with or wakes up convinced that they are Holden
Caulfield, or the Lady of the Lake, or someone like that.
TSR: Is
there
anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your collection, anything at all?
HO: Do you
think Mr Fox gets let off too easily?
TSR: How does
it feel knowing that people are buying your book?
HO: Oh, er...
TSR:
What are you working on now?
HO: A novel.
TSR:
What are
the three most recent short story collections you've read?
HO: Boule de Suif and other stories by Maupassant, The Woman with the
Bouquet by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, and I'd Like by Amanda Michalopolou. The first story in The Woman with the Bouquet is tremendous,
and I recommend getting the book just for that.
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