In those few lines, Oyeyemi provides what may be the perfect summation of her own work. Woe to those who believe in what is written, and woe to those who don’t.” (296) The film seems to be a judgment upon the written word and the stranglehold it assumes. “you can neither see into these siblings’ lives nor out. Is it possible that the other really believes the horrible smears they’re writing? If not, how can they tell? “Tension darkens each frame,” Oyeyemi writes. But as they do so, their own relationship disintegrates, until the two lose the ability to distinguish sincerity from falsehood. They spin tales of disloyalty and staged liaisons, fiction upon defamatory fiction. Following instructions written on a wall in an abandoned house, they each begin circulating rumours that the other is a spy. The siblings, who are propaganda writers, are given a test by the Party. It’s a short “spectral wisp” of a movie, a story about a brother and sister in Cold War Russia. Late in Helen Oyeyemi’s beguiling new collection of stories, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, a character becomes obsessed with a film.
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