Mr. Fox
Amazon Best Books of the Month, October 2011:Helen Oyeyemi’sMr. Foxuses a series of interconnected vignettes to capture the love triangle between wry, self-absorbed writer St. John Fox, his wife, Daphne, and his imagined muse, Mary Foxe. As his muse Mary takes form on the page, St. John struggles to maintain his already tenuous marriage. Through different time periods and characters, he writes and rewrites Mary Foxe as an embodiment of unrequited love: the young girl who removes her heart to alleviate heartache; the nanny tasked with caring for a cold, apathetic teenager; the fearful daughter reliving her father’s stories of the tragedies that befall rebellious children. Through them all is the shared and often feverish complexity that comes with sustained relationships. Oyeyemi publishedThe Icarus Girlat just 19, so it’s no wonder that this, her fourth novel, sets a high literary bar. With clever, tender, and often poignant prose, she captures the magic and heartbreak of the love story.--Heather Dileepan--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.