Helen Oyeyemi

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Gingerbread; Boy, Snow, Bird; and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours returns with a vivid and inventive new novel about a couple forever changed by an unusual train voyage. When Otto and Xavier Shin declare their love, an aunt gifts them a trip on a sleeper train to mark their new commitment--and to get them out of her house. Setting off with their pet mongoose, Otto and Xavier arrive at their sleepy local train station, but quickly deduce that The Lucky Day is no ordinary locomotive. Their trip on this former tea-smuggling train has been curated beyond their wildest imaginations, complete with mysterious and welcoming touches, like ingredients for their favorite breakfast. They seem to be the only people onboard, until Otto discovers a secretive woman who issues a surprising message. As further clues and questions pile up, and the trip upends everything they thought they knew, Otto and Xavier begin to see connections to their own pasts, connections that now bind them together. A spellbinding tale from a star author, Peaces is about what it means to be seen by another person--whether it's your lover or a stranger on a train--and what happens when things you thought were firmly in the past turn out to be right beside you.

Peaces

Ryan Mateyk

Stefanie  Uwah

This is the most confusing book I have ever read. I can’t even tell you what it was about.

Mark Wadley

In this novel, an unusual couple and their pet mongoose take a trip on an even more unusual train and come to find out just how connected they are to their fellow passengers. It’s a sprawling story disguised as a simple one, its branching paths expertly contained by the setting and Oyeyemi’s powerful—and sometimes frustrating—narrative control.

Some folks have made Wes Anderson comparisons here, and I get it—train setting, intersecting dramas of wealthy people, twee flourishes—but I feel like PEACES shares more DNA with Altman and Lynch, willing to embrace a sort of shaggy aimlessness and a preference for strangeness and uncertainty. I appreciate the emotional tenderness Oyeyemi brings to this approach, though, which infuses inviting warmth into a story that doesn’t show its cards easily.

PEACES is definitely an Oyeyemi novel—interwoven fantastic and domestic elements, themes of class and race, a unique approach to building and resolving tension—but it’s built less on the fairy tales and dream logic that characterize her earlier work (though those are certainly still present) and more on a complex overlapping of very human—albeit highly unusual—relationships. There’s a Rashomon effect in play on almost every page, each character entering the story with their own secrets. By the end we get a picture of an entire web of connected intrigues, heartbreak, and family drama, though that map might take another two or three reads to fully decipher. 

I’m not sure there’s an author writing today who better integrates fabulism into startlingly contemporary stories, but Oyeyemi isn’t interested in taking it easy on the reader—it takes work to absorb and understand everything going on here, and even then you’re not guaranteed a satisfying resolution—and I think it’s worth the effort.


Becky Carpenter

Playful, avant-garde, and just the right length. This book works best when you just go with it and lose yourself in it. People who prefer solving or dissecting books should pass on this one, but if you can allow yourself to indulge in the moment-by-moment whimsical feel of this, you will enjoy the romp immensely.

This was like a 3.5, a 3 if I'm really being honest but I'm actually a sucker for the prettiness of all of Oyeyemi's sentences.

I think this one was a solid four-star book until 2/3rds of the way in, when it became super epistolary for some reason and I felt like all of the interesting, shiny, gossamer threads connecting all the disparate parts of this novel came into focus and...I didn't find the constellation it formed nearly as interesting as all of the shiny strings led me feel like it would be. 

In general though I continue to be such a fan of her writing! Every book is still delightful to read and finish — I think she's especially gifted in terms of creating peculiar and charming landscapes/worlds to populate with equally peculiar and charming characters — and I'm looking forward to reading more.

Moray Lyle McIntosh

I love all the parts of this novel. The surrealism. The magical realism. The ornate train passing through unidentifiable destinations, full of bizarrely themed compartments. The semi-sentient mongooses and absurd, coincidental meetings. It’s a list of reasons to love Peaces. But I didn’t. I think the problem is the characters, Otto and Xavier the non-honeymooning honeymooners, Ava, Allegra, and Laura, the residents of the train on a quest to prove Ava’s sanity. The endlessly mysterious Prem who links them all. They’re all rather two-dimensional, pawns to the plot and setting that fail to capture the attention. The theme of visibility, of being seen or unseen by others runs through it but the thread leads nowhere, tangling and spiralling in a way that becomes dull and repetitive because the characters with the capacity to see or be seen have no purchase on the reader’s attention of feelings. The writing, as ever, is glittering and acrobatic but just wasn’t enough. I’m struck that the story could have beenba brilliant short story, or a novella, but they're just isn't enough substance for 250+ pages

Peaces

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