A New New Me
Oyeyemi’s prose is propelled by a subtle animism; her sentences sometimes seem to contain the whole book in miniature ... Likely to scramble the senses. Genres and registers collide: her prose offers, in a single page, poetic candor, sly wit, dad jokes, and contemporary therapyspeak ... Some novels insist on being read as prescriptions for living; Oyeyemi’s simply depicts a process: one splinter of a soul briefly gains control of a body, and goes out to be engulfed by the world.
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Oyeyemi’s books are getting weirder — and I mean that in the best way ... Could be overwhelming, but Oyeyemi is such a confident writer, her details always specific and alive, that you know you’re in good hands even if you’re not entirely sure what material those hands are made of ... In addition to getting weirder, Oyeyemi’s novels have been getting funnier over the years, and her new-newest follows that trend ... Throughly enjoyable.
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It’s a brilliantly fun set-up ... But whether the book works overall is a different matter. Most jarringly, the seven Kingas don’t feel distinct enough to make the supposed rivalry between them believable. Perhaps it’s just over-ambition on Oyeyemi’s part; for while a character per day seems a simple premise, when it comes to it, the Kingas end up seeming very similar. But maybe this is the point after all.
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