Ebook Evaluation
A New New Me
By Helen OyeyemiRiverhead: 224 pages, $29If you purchase books linked on our website, The Occasions could earn a fee from Bookshop.org, whose charges assist unbiased bookstores.
Helen Oyeyemi’s books are getting weirder — and I imply that in one of the simplest ways.
“A New New Me,” her eighth novel, follows Kinga, a 40-year-old Polish lady who, on the Monday we meet her, turns into a Czech passport holder after having lately attained citizenship. She spends her morning crunching on the spot espresso granules, repeating Snoop Dogg’s day by day affirmations, which she’s translated into Czech, and making an attempt on outfits.
A lot whimsy barely 20 pages right into a guide might be overwhelming, however Oyeyemi is such a assured author, her particulars at all times particular and alive, that you already know you’re in good arms even when you’re not totally 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 best way.
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 guide once more. It is because there are seven — or doubtlessly eight, relying on the way you depend — Kingas inhabiting a single thoughts and physique: Kinga-Alojzia is in control of Mondays, Kinga-Blažena of Tuesdays, Kinga-Casimira of Wednesdays and so forth till Kinga-Genovéva, whose realm is Sunday, earlier than the cycle begins yet again.
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 she or he has no concept how or why or who put him there. He does look considerably acquainted to her — and to a few of the different Kingas as properly — however she will be able to’t pin him down. Kinga-A’s suspicion is that one of many different Kingas is plotting to eliminate the remainder of them, and that this man is enjoying an element in that. Is he linked to the Luxurious Enamel Posse? To Milica? Is he a secret lover? A pal? 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 summary 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 specific 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 could be intentionally mendacity to the others. None of them are capable of entry the others’ days, however they have been all, it appears, roughly current once they have been a part of their shared OG Kinga — earlier than, that’s, she requested Kingas A by way of G to take over and reside her life full time.
Kinga, in different phrases, appears to have dissociative id dysfunction (or DID, beforehand often called a number of character dysfunction), a severe psychological sickness that begins in childhood and is linked to extreme trauma. It’s additionally a dysfunction that has gained loads of consideration lately on account of 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 purpose); they’ve discovered a psychiatrist, Dr. Holý, who’s completely glad to deal with them as they’re. Readers do be taught that there have been alternate Kingas since childhood, and that their dad is a legal who went to jail in some unspecified time in the future when Kinga was younger (solely one of many Kingas writes to him). After that, Kinga principally lived along 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 method 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 will we inform them? Speaking with different individuals is a continuing act of storytelling, in spite of everything: We share anecdotes, we narrate our joys and fears and troubles to 1 one other, we agree on the shared story of our actuality (or we don’t), we curate our actuality in another way relying on who we share it with. It follows, then, that speaking with the self, or facets of ourselves, is simply as a lot about understanding, deciphering and framing our personal experiences by way of narrative.
There’s quite a bit occurring within the background of “A New New Me,” whose most important plotline swirls up and round unpredictably like self-serve fro-yo. Probably the most outstanding and evocative of those background shadow performs is the connection between Kinga and her brother, Benek, who we by no means really meet, however whose life’s trajectory and profession have been made attainable by Kinga’s childhood sacrifices. It’s becoming and one way or the other ominous that Benek is an actor — he will get to strive on different characters for a dwelling and but can at all times return to himself, whereas Kinga really lives as a collection of recurring however separate “characters,” which is to say, her totally different selves. I’m not totally 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 (considered one of them is a perfumer’s muse; one other creates vacationer experiences involving manufacturing a disaster and having the consumer save the day) or just within the whimsical nature of the world they inhabit (see Luxurious Enamel Posse above). “A New New Me” is completely pleasurable and may be very more likely 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.”
