Book review: Parasol Against The Axe’s magic realism makes for alienating read

Parasol Against The Axe

By Helen Oyeyemi
Magical realism/Faber & Faber/Paperback/272 pages/$22.00/Amazon SG (

amzn.to/4exyNPR

)
2 stars

The latest novel by acclaimed British-Nigerian author Helen Oyeyemi, Parasol Against The Axe, is a love letter to Prague written in the genre of magical realism. It is the first of her books to be set in the city, although she has been based there since 2013.

Born in Ibadan, Nigeria, Oyeyemi rose to prominence after writing her first book, The Icarus Girl (2005), while studying for her A levels. She often infuses elements of magic and horror into her books, retelling European fairy tales such as Snow White.

The protagonists of Parasol Against The Axe, whose perspectives alternate within the book, are Hero Tojosoa and Dorothea Gilmartin. Physical descriptions of Hero as “six feet tall in socks, inhabiting this stature fully and with lightness”, while Thea is “neither tall nor petite, she fits in wherever there’s room for the average”, are merely the beginning of their differences. And it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly leads them to be friends and later fall out.

Later chapters reveal what seems to be a convoluted plot about revenge, but one cannot be sure as Thea repeatedly meets a woman dressed as a mole while Hero inexplicably marries a stranger who may also be a golem.

An unknown narrator says: “Now, if Hero Tojosoa was an axe, then Dorothea Gilmartin was a parasol. Really both were both, of course, but you try telling them that.”

Yet it is unclear what makes one the axe and the other a parasol.

As a genre, magical realism takes place in a realistic world while incorporating elements of magic that blur the line between reality and fantasy. In her tale, Oyeyemi posits a magical book titled Paradoxical Undressing by Merlin Mwenda, in which the story changes depending on the reader and when the book is reopened.

More interesting than the plot are the stories within Paradoxical Undressing, shifting from a mysterious bookshop to the wild origins of a trio of bandits to an obsessively frugal Vietnamese woman who is secretly a criminal. Even the sheer ridiculousness of the fictional author’s biography is a happy reprieve from the weight of the main story, which is bogged down by pretentiousness.

Beautiful as the prose is, with descriptions of the city and in-depth looks at each of the main characters and their intertwined relationships, there is something alienating about the writing that keeps casual readers at bay.

What is meant to be a story of three women facing their problems with one another is instead marred by a sense that their lives and problems are too contrived. Also, their conversations are filled with too many pretentious words.

It is a shame, as this reviewer had high hopes for both book and author, having heard high praise for Oyeyemi over the years.

If you like this, read: The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafon (Penguin Books, 2001, $22.75, Amazon SG, go to

amzn.to/3XvkCV7

). After his father’s death, protagonist Daniel finds comfort in a book called The Shadow Of The Wind by Julian Carax and sets out to look for the missing author. He discovers a stranger named after Carax’s villain has been systematically destroying the author’s works.