STARRED REVIEW
August 2005

Caught between two worlds

By Helen Oyeyemi
Review by
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Written when she was 18 years old, Helen Oyeyemi’s sophisticated debut novel, The Icarus Girl, tells the story of eight-year-old Jessamy Jess Harrison, a girl caught between many different realms. She is on one hand unnaturally precocious and on the other, childish in her displays of fits and tantrums. She is also trapped between the two cultures exemplified by her Nigerian mother and her British father. Her parents move to Nigeria, hopeful that this will allay the anxieties that are causing Jess’ violent outbursts.

While snooping around near her grandfather’s home, she sees her name scrawled in the dust on the surface of a table and soon meets her first and only friend, Titiola, whom Jess affectionately calls Tilly. Tilly is eerily fleeting in presence and tight-lipped about her family and home. When Jess’ parents decide to move back to England, Tilly gives Jess her word that she will not be far behind. When the two girls are reunited in England, their friendship takes on a more preternatural hue. Jess realizes that she is the only one who can see Tilly, and the creepiness of their connection culminates in a chilling vision of an infant. The meaning of the vision is initially a mystery to Jess, but turns out to hold the key to her troubled state of mind and her relationship to Tilly.

Oyeyemi fluently incorporates Nigerian iconography and mythology into the plot and explains Jess’ bizarre behavior (which includes cutting out pictures of twins from schoolbooks) as a meeting of the real and the surreal. While the doppelganger theme runs the risk of being played out given its prevalence in so many timeless works of literature, Oyeyemi adds a new spin by relating this doubling to Nigerian custom and culture. Her imagination is gripping and fearsome and even more estimable given the fact that she is only in her second year of college.

Siobhan O’Leary writes from New York.

 

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The Icarus Girl

The Icarus Girl

By Helen Oyeyemi
Nan Talese
ISBN 9780385513838

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