Guide Overview
A New New Me
By Helen OyeyemiRiverhead: 224 pages, $29If you purchase books linked on our web site, The Occasions might earn a fee from Bookshop.org, whose charges assist impartial bookstores.
Helen Oyeyemi’s books are getting weirder — and I imply that in one of the best ways.
“A New New Me,” her eighth novel, follows Kinga, a 40-year-old Polish girl who, on the Monday we meet her, turns into a Czech passport holder after having not too long ago attained citizenship. She spends her morning crunching instantaneous espresso granules, repeating Snoop Dogg’s day by day affirmations, which she’s translated into Czech, and attempting on outfits.
A lot whimsy barely 20 pages right into a ebook could possibly be overwhelming, however Oyeyemi is such a assured author, her particulars all the time particular and alive, that you recognize you’re in good arms even in the event you’re not fully positive what materials these arms are fabricated from, the place they’re taking you, or how a lot they’ll jiggle and jostle you alongside the way in which.
Along with getting weirder, Helen Oyeyemi’s novels have been getting funnier over time, and her new-newest follows that development.
(Kateřina Janišová)
After the primary chapter, we by no means meet that individual Kinga who opens the ebook once more. It is because there are seven — or probably eight, relying on the way you rely — Kingas inhabiting a single thoughts and physique: Kinga-Alojzia is accountable for Mondays, Kinga-Blažena of Tuesdays, Kinga-Casimira of Wednesdays and so forth till Kinga-Genovéva, whose realm is Sunday, earlier than the cycle begins once more.
In a way, “A New New Me” is the closest the British creator has gotten to writing a thriller, as a result of on Monday night, Kinga-A finds a person tied up in her pantry and he or she has no thought how or why or who put him there. He does look considerably acquainted to her — and to a number of the different Kingas as effectively — however she will’t pin him down. Kinga-A’s suspicion is that one of many different Kingas is plotting to do away with the remainder of them, and that this man is enjoying a component in that. Is he linked to the Luxurious Enamel Posse? To Milica? Is he a secret lover? A good friend? A stranger conning all of them? These potentialities and extra are explored over the course of the week, as every Kinga writes or information her day’s diary entry.
However how dependable are they? Kinga-A provides an outline of the others on Monday, however Kinga-B instantly refutes her summaries on Tuesday, and the opposite Kingas attempt to make peace, declare indifference, or categorical their very own frustrations in flip, in order that by the point we get to Sunday, we’ve learn conflicting variations of some key moments within the Kingas’ life, and realized that a few of them is perhaps intentionally mendacity to the others. None of them are in a position to entry the others’ days, however they had been all, it appears, kind of current after they had been a part of their shared OG Kinga — earlier than, that’s, she requested Kingas A by means of G to take over and reside her life full time.
Kinga, in different phrases, appears to have dissociative identification dysfunction (or DID, beforehand often called a number of character dysfunction), a critical psychological sickness that begins in childhood and is linked to extreme trauma. It’s additionally a dysfunction that has gained plenty of consideration in recent times resulting from social media making individuals who reside with it extra seen.
But Oyeyemi’s novel doesn’t take care of her trauma. Equally, the Kingas aren’t within the strategy of “integrating” right into a single unified self (a standard — although not universally desired — therapeutic aim); they’ve discovered a psychiatrist, Dr. Holý, who’s completely completely satisfied to deal with them as they’re. Readers do study that there have been alternate Kingas since childhood, and that their dad is a felony who went to jail sooner or later when Kinga was younger (solely one of many Kingas writes to him). After that, Kinga largely lived together with her grandparents — who appear to have been loving and current — within the Polish countryside, whereas her brother, Benek, and her mum traveled for Benek’s performing profession, an aspiration he had since he was just a little child and which all of the Kingas helped assist and facilitate in a technique or one other.
What’s “A New New Me” about, then? As in all Oyeyemi’s writing: the chaotic and unpredictable nature of storytelling. What are tales? The place do they arrive from? How and why can we inform them? Speaking with different folks is a continuing act of storytelling, in any case: We share anecdotes, we narrate our joys and fears and troubles to at least one one other, we agree on the shared story of our actuality (or we don’t), we curate our actuality otherwise relying on who we share it with. It follows, then, that speaking with the self, or points of ourselves, is simply as a lot about understanding, deciphering and framing our personal experiences by means of narrative.
There’s quite a bit taking place within the background of “A New New Me,” whose most important plotline swirls up and round unpredictably like self-serve fro-yo. Essentially the most outstanding and evocative of those background shadow performs is the connection between Kinga and her brother, Benek, who we by no means truly meet, however whose life’s trajectory and profession had been made doable by Kinga’s childhood sacrifices. It’s becoming and in some way ominous that Benek is an actor — he will get to strive on different characters for a dwelling and but can all the time return to himself, whereas Kinga truly lives as a sequence of recurring however separate “characters,” which is to say, her totally different selves. I’m not fully positive what to make of this thriller brother haunting the novel, but it surely’s intriguing.
Along with getting weirder, Oyeyemi’s novels have been getting funnier over time, and her new-newest follows that development. Its humor exhibits up within the quirks of the Kingas’ personalities (“I’ll just lounge around sending gourmet tourists spiraling by creating Tripadvisor listings and rave reviews for restaurants that don’t exist.”), of their jobs (one among them is a perfumer’s muse; one other creates vacationer experiences involving manufacturing a disaster and having the shopper save the day) or just within the whimsical nature of the world they inhabit (see Luxurious Enamel Posse above). “A New New Me” is totally pleasing and could be very prone to reward repeat readings.
I’m off to begin it over once more myself.
Masad, a books and tradition critic, is the creator of the novel “All My Mother’s Lovers” and the forthcoming novel “Beings.”
