BOOKS : When do you read the most?

Award-winning writer Helen Oyeyemi draws on fairy tales in her novels, such as her recent “Boy, Snow, Bird,” a fractured retelling of “Snow White.” Yet as a girl growing up in South London she says, “I really wasn’t interested in them.” Oyeyemi was in town last week to speak at Wellesley College.

OYEYEMI: It depends on my sleeping pattern. This winter I’ve been falling asleep around 10 p.m., waking up early, and then reading. Before that I was reading until 4 a.m. When I do that I tend to read poetry. Emily Dickinson is a staple. Recently I discovered Lavinia Greenlaw”s “A Double Sorrow,” a retelling of Troilus and Criseyde. That feels very modern but has a quality of being suspended in time.


BOOKS: Do you read myths and fairy tales now?

OYEYEMI: Yes, but I don’t seek them out. They somehow fall into my lap. If someone who writes interesting things about fairy tales, like Maria Tatar, publishes something, I’ll get that book, but usually I just stumble upon something and realize it is a retelling. The last time that happened I was reading Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca” and thought, “Oh this is ‘Bluebeard.’ ’’

BOOKS: What are you reading currently?

OYEYEMI: I just finished “Kinder Than Solitude” by Yiyun Li, which I loved so much. Now I will have to read all her other books. I read that she said she feels influenced by the writer William Trevor, whom I love.

BOOKS: What’s the last book that knocked you out?

OYEYEMI: Before the Li, “The Time Regulation Institute” by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar, a Turkish writer who’s not alive anymore. It’s very funny. The narrator works for this institute that insists that everyone’s clock in Turkey be set to the right time.


BOOKS: Do you read more European writers?

OYEYEMI: I think I’ve been biased toward American writers for a long time. Living in Prague now has made me seek more European writers. The thing about growing up in the UK is that we are nominally part of the EU, but it always feels like this isolated island. When I lived in Paris I had a Hungarian friend who knew all these writers I’d never heard of. We had completely different canons.

BOOKS: Who have been some of your favorite discoveries?

OYEYEMI: The Hungarian writer Deszo Kosztolanyi is one of those writers that you read and from the first few pages you know this writer is really important to you. My favorite novel by him is “Kornel Esti.”

BOOKS: Is it safe to say you are drawn to surrealism?

OYEYEMI: Yeah. Surrealism always makes a lot of sense to me. I like it because it’s a way of looking at things that takes into account everything that is awful and lets it be. I’m really interested in Jesse Ball. He reminds me of Gogol. “Silence Once Begun” is about a man who confesses to a crime he didn’t commit.

BOOKS: Do you read nonfiction?

OYEYEMI: I read it reluctantly. There’s only one magazine I subscribe to, Cabinet. The last article that really grabbed me was about a man who tickled his wife’s feet until she couldn’t quit laughing. She had to be put in an asylum. This is the kind of nonfiction I gravitate to.


BOOKS: Have you read any books that scared you?

OYEYEMI: I used to read a lot of horror. I’m a big fan of Stephen King’s stuff, especially his classics such as “The Shining.” I had to stop reading horror because I wanted to sleep and be happy.

BOOKS: Do you know what you will read next?

OYEYEMI: I’m judging two book prizes at the moment, which means I’ll to have read about 200 books by the end of the year. I’ve had to put myself on a reading schedule of 250 pages a day. I’d normally read about 100 books in a leisurely way. I think I bit off more than I can chew.

AMY SUTHERLAND

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