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Katerina Janisova photo<\/p>\n
Helen Oyeyemi\u2019s writing often features doppelgangers, double, alter egos and shadow selves; identities often aren\u2019t fixed in her fiction.<\/p>\n
The Kingas are supposed to keep in touch with each other by writing in a shared journal or dropping voice memos, but the system comes under severe stress when Kinga-A comes back to their flat to find a strange man zip-tied to an armchair in the pantry.<\/p>\n
Even before the whole man-tied-up thing, though, there have been issues with these seven \u201csisters.\u201d There are unreliable accounts, constant complaints, unauthorized spending binges, a certain amount of undermining \u2014 not to mention the couple of Kingas who self-identify as \u201cTeam Toxic.\u201d<\/p>\n
One Kinga is jeopardizing their therapy by obsessively stalking their therapist. Another, resentful of Kinga-A\u2019s bossiness, is fomenting a laundry strike. And there are brief, haunted glimpses of \u201cOG Kinga,\u201d whoever this woman might have been before she splintered so dramatically.<\/p>\n
To be clear, A New New Me is not in any sense meant to be a realistic depiction of dissociative disorder. It\u2019s not a psychological thriller. Like much of Oyeyemi\u2019s work, it\u2019s a weird tale, a fractured fairy story, a mind-messing postmodern joke.<\/p>\n
Oyeyemi has always been fascinated by doppelgangers, doubles, alter egos and shadow selves. Identities aren\u2019t fixed in her fiction, and all her characters contain multitudes. It\u2019s just more obvious here.<\/p>\n
Kinga-A is best suited to face Monday mornings, being optimistic and organized, a get-things-done sort of gal. Kinga-C is \u201cour beloved weirdo.\u201d Kinga-F can be a bit of a party girl, while Kinga-G is thought by the others to be saintly (possibly too saintly).<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t A New New Me<\/p>\n With its suggestion that everyone is juggling roles, balancing personal and professional demands and basically multitasking all the time, the novel also functions as a satire of late capitalism.<\/p>\n Kinga-A\u2019s corporate position \u2014 and she\u2019s a keener \u2014 involves matchmaking bank employees, not to make them happy but to make them more productive. Kinga-B does the same job, but she\u2019s a cynic and a slacker. The other Kingas are either underemployed or out there in the gig economy, their various side hustles including perfume muse, window washer, thief, flea-marketeer. One Kinga\u2019s sole role is to stay home and sign for deliveries.<\/p>\n \n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n \t\t Finally, the seven-in-one protagonist allows Oyeyemi to play with narrative. It\u2019s not just that the novel is related from seven different \u2014 and often contentious and contradictory \u2014 points of view. It\u2019s also jammed with diversions and detours and even dead ends. There are stories-within-stories-within-stories \u2014 one of which is paradoxically titled A Tale Told by No One to No One.<\/p>\n At points, these wayward side-plots might feel a little too random, a little too whimsical, even. But there are always Oyeyemi\u2019s sharp insights, her anarchic energy, her sheer glee \u2014 and she uses that word a lot \u2014 in language, which veers from the complex and abstract to the snappy, comic and very vernacular.<\/p>\n Taken all together, with every Kinga having her say, A New New Me is sometimes uneven but rarely uninteresting.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Katerina Janisova photo<\/p>\n Helen Oyeyemi\u2019s writing often features doppelgangers, double, alter egos and shadow selves; identities often aren\u2019t fixed in her fiction.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re reading on Monday, you might find it intermittently vexing. On the other hand, your Friday self, perusing it in the bath with a glass of wine like Kinga-E, might have a ball.<\/p>\n Alison-A signed up to write a book review. Alison-E just wanted to play online solitaire all day. They worked it out.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Alison Gillmor Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto\u2019s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.<\/p>\n
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