Mr. Fox

It has been a month since I read Mr. Fox, but I thought about it again today.

Typical meta-fiction, obviously. Oyeyemi is certainly not the first person to revisit fairy tales. I too find fairy tales fascinating, having devoured many of them in childhood. A truly globalized endeavor for a provincial kid, it was.

Anyway, Oyeyemi's take on fairy tales focuses on gender relationships and romantic love. For me, however, the mind lingers on the terror and violence in the original stories, all of which seem to be derived from the same origin:

Bluebeard
Fitcher's Bird
Mr. Fox

I realized that the logic in these stories and the mechanisms of coping with the violence and horrors are very similar to how my brain dismantles nightmares within a dream. I don't know what that means.