A review by ericaomi7
The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi

1.0

I really wanted to like this book. I have read 2 other books by this author and really enjoyed them, especially The Icarus Girl. I was also excited about the Santeria/Orisha themes. However, I was very disappointed with this book. First, as a Santeria practitioner, I found several errors. 1) Maja calls her grandmother a babalawo. This word translates to 'father of secrets', and a woman would never be referred to as such. If a woman is initiated as a priest of Ifa she would be called an Iyanifa (though in Cuba many say women can't become priests of Ifa. I think what she meant to say was that her grandmother was an olorisha or iyalorisha. 2) There was a scene where she was describing the Orisha Oya, but said her name was Iya, which means mother. 3) she referred to a woman as a santero when it should have been santera (gendered). These are basic linguistic and cultural things that she should have taken care to get right. Then, when it comes to the content of the book, the two parallel stories of Yemaya Saramagua and Maja seemed totally disconnected. I kept waiting for them to come together in some way and they never did. There was no action to the plot; it was all about what was going on in Maja's mind. I kept waiting for the story to unfold and it never seemed to fully.