The Opposite House is not the first novel to suggest that migration is a condition, not an event; but it may be the first to contend that the condition afflicts no one so profoundly as the gods.
The novel starts in the ‘somewherehouse’, which stands amid “a hush, the wrong quiet of woods when birds are afraid”, and is home to Yemaya Saramagua, an avatar of the Yoruba goddess Yemaya, who has travelled with her believers to different parts of the world, including Cuba, where she continues to play a prominent role in the Santería religion.
There are two doors in the basement of the somewherehouse— one leads to Lagos, one to London.
We catch only a glimpse of Lagos in the novel, but in London there is Maja, a 25-year-old singer whose black Cuban family migrated there when she was seven. Considering that move, Maja decides: “There’s an age beyond which it is impossible to lift a child from the pervading marinade of an original country, pat them down with a paper napkin and then deep-fry them in another country... I arrived here just before that age.” But did she? When she discovers she is pregnant, her thoughts turn increasingly to Cuba, a country she barely remembers. More specifically, it is “my Cuba” rather than Cuba itself for which she yearns.
Subtle writer
Aaron, the white Ghanaian father of her child, cannot comprehend what is happening to Maja as advancing pregnancy pulls her away from everyday life towards a world that is more imagination (part hopeful, part fearful) than memory; there is also little real understanding from her mother, with her faith in Santería, or her father, with his faith in reason. It is her best friend, Amy Eleni, with her own personal hysteric— more of a stiletto heel than an empty jacket— who is the closest thing Maja has to a confidante.
What precisely is the relationship between Maja and Yemaya? Is one a manifestation of the other’s untethering from the real world, or do both reflect a condition of being adrift? Oyeyemi is too sharp and subtle a writer to spell out the connections, choosing echoes and suggestions over a join-the-dots approach.
If she were slightly less assured a writer, closeness to characters as trapped and desperate as Maja and Yemaya might prove unbearable— but 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.
There are moments, admittedly, when her ability to look suffering squarely in the eye and describe it in all its horror can be enough to make you take a brisk walk before returning to the next sentence. For instance: “The pain on her cheeks, her forehead, her hands, stands out blackly, as if her veins are delicately weeping poison and her skin is a cloth placed over it to soak up the damage.” Here is language that does justice to the suffering of gods.
The Guardian