Mr. Fox

Helen Oyeyemi’s Mr. Fox, full of twists and discoveries, offers a set of variations and reversals on the old English folktale of Mr. Fox and Lady Mary. Though it has a number of differences from the Bluebeard tale, it has a mysterious, powerful, murderous husband. In Oyeyemi’s version, there’s Mr. Fox, a writer, Daphne, his wife, and then Mary, his muse who comes to life and upbraids him for all the women he kills in his books. The stories within stories in this novel display multiple configurations of triangles, alterations in the power structure, and new versions of old relationships.