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A New New Me: A Novel
From the award-winning, bestselling “literary pied piper” (The New York Times Book Review) who brought us Boy, Snow, Bird and Gingerbread comes a charmingly surreal novel about self-sabotage, self-deception, self-love—and the many selves inside us sparring for control.
Kinga is a woman who is just trying to make it through the week.
There’s a Kinga for every on Mondays, you can catch Kinga A deleting food delivery apps. By Friday, Kinga E is happy to spend the days soaking, wine-drunk, in the bath.
Kingas A-G, perhaps unsurprisingly, live a varied life—between them is a professional matchmaker, a scent-crazed perfumer and a window cleaner, all with varying degrees of apathy, anger, introversion and bossiness. At least three of them are Team Toxic.
It’s an arrangement that’s not without its fair share of admin, grudges, and half-truths. But when Kinga A discovers a man tied up in their apartment, the Kingas have to reckon with the possibility that one of them might be planning to destroy them all.
An account of seven particularly busy days in an already hectic inner life from master storyteller Helen Oyeyemi, A New New Me cleverly what if the different sides of your personality had trust issues with each other? How many versions of oneself can one self safely contain?
Kinga is a woman who is just trying to make it through the week.
There’s a Kinga for every on Mondays, you can catch Kinga A deleting food delivery apps. By Friday, Kinga E is happy to spend the days soaking, wine-drunk, in the bath.
Kingas A-G, perhaps unsurprisingly, live a varied life—between them is a professional matchmaker, a scent-crazed perfumer and a window cleaner, all with varying degrees of apathy, anger, introversion and bossiness. At least three of them are Team Toxic.
It’s an arrangement that’s not without its fair share of admin, grudges, and half-truths. But when Kinga A discovers a man tied up in their apartment, the Kingas have to reckon with the possibility that one of them might be planning to destroy them all.
An account of seven particularly busy days in an already hectic inner life from master storyteller Helen Oyeyemi, A New New Me cleverly what if the different sides of your personality had trust issues with each other? How many versions of oneself can one self safely contain?
214 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 8, 2025
286 people are currently reading
13248 people want to read
About the author
Helen Oyeyemi
40 books5,387 followersHelen Oyeyemi is a British novelist. She lives in Prague, and has written eleven books so far, none of which involve ‘magical realism’. Can’t fiction sometimes get extra fictional without being called such names…?
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 207 reviews
September 10, 2025
If you’d like to take a break from reading books where a lot of stuff happens, and would instead like to ponder the questions: "What does it mean to trust yourself? Can you trust yourself? What makes up 'yourself' anyway?" read A New New Me by Helen Oyeyemi.
It's nominally a mystery, but unfolds as seven days in the life of Kinga, a woman who has a different personality (a full consciousness with no memory of the others) on each day of the week. We follow Kingas A-through-G as they investigate and comment on each other's actions. Every Kinga is a good time, worth hanging out with, even if the assigned character traits for each one can seem like a grab bag from a D&D sheet. Don’t worry about keeping the women straight because the story proceeds in a linear fashion.
Pick up this book if you're in the mood for seven little character studies that beautifully interlock. Oyeyemi is a talented writer and A New New Me is filled with charming, lyrical observations about relationships. And, I appreciated that the story didn't revolve around "fixing" Kinga. She (they) is how she (they) are!
This is the kind of novel that I would recommend for writers. Reading work like this is what your creative writing professor suggests when they encourage you to read broadly across categories, instead of reading deeply in only one type of fiction.
It's nominally a mystery, but unfolds as seven days in the life of Kinga, a woman who has a different personality (a full consciousness with no memory of the others) on each day of the week. We follow Kingas A-through-G as they investigate and comment on each other's actions. Every Kinga is a good time, worth hanging out with, even if the assigned character traits for each one can seem like a grab bag from a D&D sheet. Don’t worry about keeping the women straight because the story proceeds in a linear fashion.
Pick up this book if you're in the mood for seven little character studies that beautifully interlock. Oyeyemi is a talented writer and A New New Me is filled with charming, lyrical observations about relationships. And, I appreciated that the story didn't revolve around "fixing" Kinga. She (they) is how she (they) are!
This is the kind of novel that I would recommend for writers. Reading work like this is what your creative writing professor suggests when they encourage you to read broadly across categories, instead of reading deeply in only one type of fiction.
May 10, 2025
I won't beat around the bush, Helen Oyeyemi: you meet my requirements. Reading this book is like being the kind of drunk where the night dissolves into a chaos of bizarre events, and simultaneously makes a horrid, doomy kind of sense. And the soundtrack is Pink's Split Personality. Recommended for your alters who don't trouble themselves with minor details like logic and and a traditional plot, whilst being here for a gleeful skewering of...more or less everything.
September 21, 2025
I have absolutely no idea what I just read.
October 20, 2025
I had a great time reading this. Delightfully bizarre, wryly witty, poetic prose, A NEW NEW ME had me laughing, choking up, and bookmarking passages left and right. This book is my kind of literary fiction: thoughtful, experimental, emotionally nuanced, and entertainingly out of the ordinary.
May 13, 2025
“Off season this garden really scares me – the gnarled shrubs stoop over the soil with their branches clenched, defending vacant hollows. You can feel this wasn’t a fair fight. Autumn and winter are deranged predators that rip softness away from every skinny little twig that ever reached out for something to hold. And we look the other way because we’re charmed by the multicoloured leaves followed by the ice skating and whatnot.”
Nigerian born, South London raised, Prague based Helen Oyeyemi was included in the 2013 cohort of the prestigious decennial Grant Best of British Young Novelists (the year she moved to Prague) and has over time built up an extremely distinctive body of novels – many of which use fairy tales as a launchpad for her story telling imagination - of which this is her 9th.
I came to her work relatively late – reading her 6thnovel “Gingerbread” (2019) and 7th the Goldsmith shortlisted “Peaces” (2021).
About the first I said “Oyeyemi is a master of what I can only call digressive description, never one to see a tangent and not want to go off on it, often building a fascinating side story …. only to sate her imaginative appetite .. and return to the main narrative and [given a book With an implicit Hansel and Gretel link that] I was .. reminded a little of the story of [their] second trip to the Gingerbread cottage: at times I would feel that I was starting to follow the trail of the narrative only to retrace my steps and see that those crumbs had been snatched away.”
My review of the second riffed on a passage where Oyeyemi (for whom an examination of storytelling is at the heart of her story telling) has a character address the “four types of engaged audience” at a marionette show – those who attention is on the marionette, those who seek for the puppet master, those who watch the fellow audience members and “those who follow the strings and the strings alone … [they] may not much care about the order of the strings – if they tangle, they tangle. Still, they express something … about the nature of the illusion before her. That's enough of a reason … to pursue the strings to their vanishing point” – and how an appreciation of Oyeyemi’s writing really requires an attention to all four.
And in a recent-ish interview around her 8th and previous novel “Parasol Against The Axe” Oyeyemi said “Sometimes I lean toward the idea that language is a virus—if you put down a few words, they turn into something else and turn into something else and turn into something else. If you leave that unchecked, you have maximum story ….. In a way, I try to provoke stories and get them to show us what they are and what they mean ………. I let it get out of hand. I’m complicit ……. If I have one goal as a writer, it’s to make sentences that move at the speed of thought. We free-associate all the time between everything. We’re in one place, then we’re in another, and then we’re here. I just want to course through every conceivable construct. So when, at a certain point, you do stop and think, Where am I?, that for me is it!”
The basic back-cover-blurb conceit here is of a person Kinga Sigora who is in fact seven different Kingas – one for each day of the week, respectively Kingas Alojzia, Blazena, Casimira, Dusa, Eliska, Filomena and Genoveva (or more conveniently Kinga-A to Kinga-G), each basically living/inhabiting one day of the week (from Monday-Sunday), some of them sharing a job and others acting largely independently, communicating with each other by way of diary/journal entries, a communication often underpinned by long running grudges and feuds and sometimes by evasions.
That would in most author’s hands be enough of a device in itself to largely define the novel but here it is little more than a framing device a story told in seven chapters.
What we are reading in those chapters are the seven diary entries leading up to the Sunday which is the original Kinga (sometimes called Kinga OG)’s Saint Day – Saint Cunigunde (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunigun...) best known for a slap she delivered with consequences which served as a permanent warning – a week opened with the Kinga’s gaining their Czech Citizenship and with Kinga-A (who a few years previously during COVID quarantine took over for three weeks all of the other Kingas days), while mid consultation with their shared psychotherapist Dr Holy, discovering a zip tied and gagged man (who Kinga-B finds out is called Jarda/Jaroslav) in their apartment – immediately suspecting it’s somehow part of a plot by Kinga-G to eliminate the rest of them, a plot inspired by the seven unclean spirits passage in Matthew 12:43-45. Over time the other Kingas – often distrustful of either Kinga A or Kinga G or both – try to understand what is going on (at the same time we do).
And even that is only a small part of the story which includes but is far from restricted to: the malign influence of The Luxury Enamel Posse gangsters who, partly to manipulate house prices, raid households and fold the inhabitants up in a suitcase packed with false teeth and blank cheques; Milica who befriends the Kingas and whose connections to Jarda and possibly the Posse emerge over time; (some of the) Kinga’s job working for a bank-sponsored matchmaking service which certifies relationships so as to be eligible in decades time for state run fidelity awards; a ghost-landlord who serves a terracotta army of regulars; the Kingas imprisoned father, movie star brother and dating mother; an adventure holiday company which enacts scenes of danger for its clients to have an opportunity to save others – and which here involves some high rise hotel window cleaners and a flea market selling someone their own purloined goods; the story of how the Kingas first came to be involving Kinga OG, a failed school reunion and the eight of pentacles tarot card; a perfumer obsessed with a scent which will capture a scene from Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence; a set of negatives for a staged kidnapping which culminates in a group of tortoises delivering the ransom money and a religious themed strip club looking for a new manager.
And returning to all my opening remarks – I quote them at length as I think they are key to the appreciation and enjoyment of this (like all other) Oyeyemi novel’s: enjoy the digressions while they last, don’t expect to follow all of the breadcrumbs, pursue the strings (but also think about marionette, puppet master and audience), embrace free-association, and when you think “where am I” then know that is what you are meant to think.
Recommended for a unique reading experience.
December 16, 2025
A New New Me by Helen Oyeyemi
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Erratic. Playful. Sublime.
“I’ve lit the candle.
This is something I’m doing in case I don’t get another Monday. This is what I wanted to see. I’m lying down now. Watching the flames sway and stretch, sometimes towards me, sometimes away from me, scattering gold.
I wonder how this candle will burn. I wonder if it can continue forging this dazzling path after I’ve closed my eyes.
I wonder who will wake to see what’s left after a broken candle burns through the night”
I have reread this paragraph more than a hundred times since finishing this book. It has stayed with me-one of the best things I’ve read all year. It’s currently scribbled in my journal, underlined, circled, lived with.
Oyeyemi’s writing is a wonderland. Expect the unexpected. She is absolutely an acquired taste-and I mean that as the highest compliment. Part of the Granta orbit (Natasha Brown, Han Kang, Zadie Smith, Patrick Ryan-do you see the trend?), her work is technically literary fiction, though it resists categorization. Absurdist, uncanny, playful, sharp.
The emotional movements in this book are erratic and distinct. Oyeyemi is all over the place, and I love it because it serves a purpose. The book climaxes ten times in a single chapter. There’s play, joy, and real depth here. I haven’t laughed this much reading a book in a while- not stand-up funny, but serious funny. The ridiculous kind.
Though her style leans surreal, A New New Me reminded me of Fleabag - the wit, the dry humor, the interiority of Kinga. That sharp, self-aware voice that cuts and soothes at the same time.
This is creative writing at its peak. Even though the narrative is linear, so much is happening simultaneously that you have to stay alert- present.
This book deepened my curiosity about dissociative identity disorder. What would it feel like if different selves woke up each day in the same body? I love that Oyeyemi isn’t interested in diagnosis or-there’s no fixation on a cure or a fix-but instead lingers on the beauty of the out-of-the-ordinary. She draws from everywhere except the medical: myth, humor, intuition, and even the spiritual-quoting Matthew 12:45, with its image of spirits leaving and returning-to tell the story. In doing so, she reframes fragmentation not as pathology, but as a creative way of being.
If you like Haruki Murakami, Thomas Pynchon, or writers who know the rules intimately and then ignore them anyway, you’ll love this.
Or if you’re simply in a reading or writing slump and need a glass of ice-cold water thrown in your face - this is the one.
Other Favorite Quotes:
“Context isn’t everything but it is the main thing”
“You’re calling on affiliation to alter your very nature “
“People like to act as if love is agreeing on a lot of little things and hate is disagreeing on a few big things. . . But no. These supposed harmonies and dissonances are a weak excuse for emoting all over each other”
“After all these years, none of you have learned how to lie flat and allow situations to take care of themselves “
“Feminine strength lies in endurance. It’s the masculine strength that’s explosive “
“I think biographies should begin 9 months before the subject is born and end 9 months after their life does”
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Erratic. Playful. Sublime.
“I’ve lit the candle.
This is something I’m doing in case I don’t get another Monday. This is what I wanted to see. I’m lying down now. Watching the flames sway and stretch, sometimes towards me, sometimes away from me, scattering gold.
I wonder how this candle will burn. I wonder if it can continue forging this dazzling path after I’ve closed my eyes.
I wonder who will wake to see what’s left after a broken candle burns through the night”
I have reread this paragraph more than a hundred times since finishing this book. It has stayed with me-one of the best things I’ve read all year. It’s currently scribbled in my journal, underlined, circled, lived with.
Oyeyemi’s writing is a wonderland. Expect the unexpected. She is absolutely an acquired taste-and I mean that as the highest compliment. Part of the Granta orbit (Natasha Brown, Han Kang, Zadie Smith, Patrick Ryan-do you see the trend?), her work is technically literary fiction, though it resists categorization. Absurdist, uncanny, playful, sharp.
The emotional movements in this book are erratic and distinct. Oyeyemi is all over the place, and I love it because it serves a purpose. The book climaxes ten times in a single chapter. There’s play, joy, and real depth here. I haven’t laughed this much reading a book in a while- not stand-up funny, but serious funny. The ridiculous kind.
Though her style leans surreal, A New New Me reminded me of Fleabag - the wit, the dry humor, the interiority of Kinga. That sharp, self-aware voice that cuts and soothes at the same time.
This is creative writing at its peak. Even though the narrative is linear, so much is happening simultaneously that you have to stay alert- present.
This book deepened my curiosity about dissociative identity disorder. What would it feel like if different selves woke up each day in the same body? I love that Oyeyemi isn’t interested in diagnosis or-there’s no fixation on a cure or a fix-but instead lingers on the beauty of the out-of-the-ordinary. She draws from everywhere except the medical: myth, humor, intuition, and even the spiritual-quoting Matthew 12:45, with its image of spirits leaving and returning-to tell the story. In doing so, she reframes fragmentation not as pathology, but as a creative way of being.
If you like Haruki Murakami, Thomas Pynchon, or writers who know the rules intimately and then ignore them anyway, you’ll love this.
Or if you’re simply in a reading or writing slump and need a glass of ice-cold water thrown in your face - this is the one.
Other Favorite Quotes:
“Context isn’t everything but it is the main thing”
“You’re calling on affiliation to alter your very nature “
“People like to act as if love is agreeing on a lot of little things and hate is disagreeing on a few big things. . . But no. These supposed harmonies and dissonances are a weak excuse for emoting all over each other”
“After all these years, none of you have learned how to lie flat and allow situations to take care of themselves “
“Feminine strength lies in endurance. It’s the masculine strength that’s explosive “
“I think biographies should begin 9 months before the subject is born and end 9 months after their life does”
May 23, 2025
Helen Oyeyemi’s A New New Me is unique, unhinged, confusing, and a moving portrayal of mental disorders. I am still not sure what was real and what wasn’t in the story, but, maybe, that’s the whole point. The book portrays a woman’s life living with multiple personality disorder, and it doesn’t mean to give you clarity. You get inside the chaos, which is her mind, and you experience life from her personalities’ different perspectives.
The woman is Kinga, and she is many. There is Kinga-A, who takes over Mondays, Kinga-B, owning Tuesdays and so on up to Kinga-G, the most elusive of them, who owns Sundays and whose personality and intentions are not exactly clear. The Kingas share a body, that of Kinga Sikora, but they are very different in personality and ways of living. They don’t merge, they don’t blend, but they keep connected through daily journaling. They even have separate jobs, routines, desires, partners and friends. They fix each other’s messes following the notes of the previous day. For example, Kinga-B eats too much junk food, so Kinga-C needs to diet and exercise to counter it and balance it out. One schedules an appointment, and another one has to follow through. It’s absurd, and also, in some very human way, believable.
The novel is structured in seven chapters, each dedicated to one Kinga. The connecting story is that Kinga-A finds a man tied up in their storage room. Who is this man? Which Kinga brought him there, and what are his intentions? Kinga-A will start deciphering the mystery, which will pass to each Kinga until it unravels. It seems like one of the Kingas wants to sabotage their agreement, take over the body, and suppress the other personality. Which Kinga is the traitor? Alliances are formed, preferences are declared, and it’s fantastic how little the Kingas get along. There’s a bit of adventure in the story, and it’s left somewhat open, in my opinion. I am not sure what happened, who the culprit was, and who eventually won if that was the case.
Now, to me, the book is a metaphor for a woman who fractured herself to survive her trauma. The original Kinga made a pact with the seven Kingas to take over her life while she disappeared. Now, they cohabitate following a contract they agreed upon, splitting the week among themselves. Seen as a metaphor for dissociative identity disorder (DID) or a fractured mind, the novel is both brilliant and disturbing. The novelty of it was compelling. Oyeyemi throws you straight into the mind of her character and allows you to experience the chaos that is her life. The book leans into the surreal, and it’s confusing where I was looking for clarity. I don’t think clarity was the point, though, but experiencing Kinga’s life.
Kinga is struggling to survive, after all. This is why this agreement exists and why each of Kinga’s personalities takes detailed notes of her days, so some semblance of coherence exists in her life, so that she can exist in a society that doesn’t cater for people like her.
Overall, a very interesting concept and good execution, as each chapter has a different voice and personality, following the Kinga narrating it (the book is written from the first-person point of view). However, the differences between the chapters/personalities made it hard for me to stay involved in the book. I was very interested in the overall story, to learn which Kinga wants to dominate and how she plots, but some of the Kingas have their storylines that took me away from the central one, so I lost interest at times.
Finally, for a metaphor for trauma and mental disorder, this book is fantastic. Just don’t expect coherence and clarity as you go along. Some threads will connect and make sense, others won’t. By the end of it, I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d read, but I did enjoy parts of it and the overall experience of the book.
The woman is Kinga, and she is many. There is Kinga-A, who takes over Mondays, Kinga-B, owning Tuesdays and so on up to Kinga-G, the most elusive of them, who owns Sundays and whose personality and intentions are not exactly clear. The Kingas share a body, that of Kinga Sikora, but they are very different in personality and ways of living. They don’t merge, they don’t blend, but they keep connected through daily journaling. They even have separate jobs, routines, desires, partners and friends. They fix each other’s messes following the notes of the previous day. For example, Kinga-B eats too much junk food, so Kinga-C needs to diet and exercise to counter it and balance it out. One schedules an appointment, and another one has to follow through. It’s absurd, and also, in some very human way, believable.
The novel is structured in seven chapters, each dedicated to one Kinga. The connecting story is that Kinga-A finds a man tied up in their storage room. Who is this man? Which Kinga brought him there, and what are his intentions? Kinga-A will start deciphering the mystery, which will pass to each Kinga until it unravels. It seems like one of the Kingas wants to sabotage their agreement, take over the body, and suppress the other personality. Which Kinga is the traitor? Alliances are formed, preferences are declared, and it’s fantastic how little the Kingas get along. There’s a bit of adventure in the story, and it’s left somewhat open, in my opinion. I am not sure what happened, who the culprit was, and who eventually won if that was the case.
Now, to me, the book is a metaphor for a woman who fractured herself to survive her trauma. The original Kinga made a pact with the seven Kingas to take over her life while she disappeared. Now, they cohabitate following a contract they agreed upon, splitting the week among themselves. Seen as a metaphor for dissociative identity disorder (DID) or a fractured mind, the novel is both brilliant and disturbing. The novelty of it was compelling. Oyeyemi throws you straight into the mind of her character and allows you to experience the chaos that is her life. The book leans into the surreal, and it’s confusing where I was looking for clarity. I don’t think clarity was the point, though, but experiencing Kinga’s life.
Kinga is struggling to survive, after all. This is why this agreement exists and why each of Kinga’s personalities takes detailed notes of her days, so some semblance of coherence exists in her life, so that she can exist in a society that doesn’t cater for people like her.
Overall, a very interesting concept and good execution, as each chapter has a different voice and personality, following the Kinga narrating it (the book is written from the first-person point of view). However, the differences between the chapters/personalities made it hard for me to stay involved in the book. I was very interested in the overall story, to learn which Kinga wants to dominate and how she plots, but some of the Kingas have their storylines that took me away from the central one, so I lost interest at times.
Finally, for a metaphor for trauma and mental disorder, this book is fantastic. Just don’t expect coherence and clarity as you go along. Some threads will connect and make sense, others won’t. By the end of it, I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d read, but I did enjoy parts of it and the overall experience of the book.
September 29, 2025
Such a wild story, I was really amazed with the author’s ability to create such intense and astounding personalities and backgrounds for her character (s).
While progressing linearly through a week in the Kinga squad’s shoes, readers also go on tangential side quests, random flashbacks, and so much more. Honestly this one left me a bit speechless.
I mean, I found it completely fascinating, but it also somehow gave me a bit of anxiety. Still delving into why that was.
Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Penguin Random House Canada for a copy!
While progressing linearly through a week in the Kinga squad’s shoes, readers also go on tangential side quests, random flashbacks, and so much more. Honestly this one left me a bit speechless.
I mean, I found it completely fascinating, but it also somehow gave me a bit of anxiety. Still delving into why that was.
Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Penguin Random House Canada for a copy!
May 17, 2025
Almost a year ago - on 6 March 2023, in fact, I woke up with a rosary wound around the fingers of my right hand and a King James Bible clutched to my chest with my left hand. There was a bookmark stuck in the bible, and when I opened it up, there was Matthew 12:43-45, vehemently underlined. Yes, the 'seven unclean spirits' passage.
Helen Oyeyemi is a novelist I very much admire, and whose books I look forward to, without always finding them 100% successful in execution.
I commented in my review of Gingerbread, the first of her novels that I read: 'I do find it odd how much of our literature is still rooted in the 19th century realist novel, which was just one step on the novel's evolution ... Oyeyemi's focus instead on the pleasure of storytelling, recapturing the delight of fairy tales and building on absurdist, modernist literature is to be commended'.
The Goldsmiths shortlisted Peaces similarly upended narrative, and was, for me, the most successful of those I've read, and Parasol Against the Axe re-located Oyeyemi's fables to Prague, riffing from Ripellino's Magic Prague and other authors' odes to the city. I commented on that novel that is was 'stuffed with ideas and references, and which presents the, at times overwhelmed, reader with a surfeit of plot and character. It's a heady mix but I struggled to engage as much about the characters' situation as they did (an issue I also found with Oyeyemi's Gingerbread) and if there is depth to the references, erudite as they are it passed me by.'
Her newest novel, A New New Me, is relatively more conventional that the other three, in that, the key central concept aside (and yes 'aside' is doing a lot of work there), it lacks some of the fairy tale aspects (well yes aside from the ransom delivering tortoises and the exortionists who stuff people in suitcases with metorite-created molars and ...). But it similarly upends straightforward linear narrative.
The novel is narrated - in the form of a journal - by seven separate manifestations (? versions? spirits?) of Kinga, a Polish woman now living, and as the novel opens naturalised, in the Czech Republic. The novel's key concept is that there are spiritually, if not physically, seven different Kingas, one for each day of the week (plus possibly a true Kinga, who is none of them, and has left her body to them), each with very different personalities and interests, the journal their notes to each other on what has happened during their 24h guardianship.
The first Kinga, Kinga-Alojzia finds a man tied up in their pantry, and who is he and what he is doing there (including how he knows the Kinga's secret of their seven selves) is perhaps the novel's key plotline. But the effect of the seven different Kinga-narrators is rather like one of those books, or parlour games, where each of them has to carry on the story from where the other left off, but take it in their own, completely different, direction, the novel relying on this tension between the pull of the central thread (who is he?) and the push of the narrators' (and author's) tendency to take the novel off on tangents.
Not entirely successful again - 'I struggled to engage as much with the characters' situation as they did' is as pertinent as ever here, indeed I felt the pull overcame the digressive pushes a little too much - but interesting to see a novelist doing something different, including from her previous works.
Helen Oyeyemi is a novelist I very much admire, and whose books I look forward to, without always finding them 100% successful in execution.
I commented in my review of Gingerbread, the first of her novels that I read: 'I do find it odd how much of our literature is still rooted in the 19th century realist novel, which was just one step on the novel's evolution ... Oyeyemi's focus instead on the pleasure of storytelling, recapturing the delight of fairy tales and building on absurdist, modernist literature is to be commended'.
The Goldsmiths shortlisted Peaces similarly upended narrative, and was, for me, the most successful of those I've read, and Parasol Against the Axe re-located Oyeyemi's fables to Prague, riffing from Ripellino's Magic Prague and other authors' odes to the city. I commented on that novel that is was 'stuffed with ideas and references, and which presents the, at times overwhelmed, reader with a surfeit of plot and character. It's a heady mix but I struggled to engage as much about the characters' situation as they did (an issue I also found with Oyeyemi's Gingerbread) and if there is depth to the references, erudite as they are it passed me by.'
Her newest novel, A New New Me, is relatively more conventional that the other three, in that, the key central concept aside (and yes 'aside' is doing a lot of work there), it lacks some of the fairy tale aspects (well yes aside from the ransom delivering tortoises and the exortionists who stuff people in suitcases with metorite-created molars and ...). But it similarly upends straightforward linear narrative.
The novel is narrated - in the form of a journal - by seven separate manifestations (? versions? spirits?) of Kinga, a Polish woman now living, and as the novel opens naturalised, in the Czech Republic. The novel's key concept is that there are spiritually, if not physically, seven different Kingas, one for each day of the week (plus possibly a true Kinga, who is none of them, and has left her body to them), each with very different personalities and interests, the journal their notes to each other on what has happened during their 24h guardianship.
The first Kinga, Kinga-Alojzia finds a man tied up in their pantry, and who is he and what he is doing there (including how he knows the Kinga's secret of their seven selves) is perhaps the novel's key plotline. But the effect of the seven different Kinga-narrators is rather like one of those books, or parlour games, where each of them has to carry on the story from where the other left off, but take it in their own, completely different, direction, the novel relying on this tension between the pull of the central thread (who is he?) and the push of the narrators' (and author's) tendency to take the novel off on tangents.
Not entirely successful again - 'I struggled to engage as much with the characters' situation as they did' is as pertinent as ever here, indeed I felt the pull overcame the digressive pushes a little too much - but interesting to see a novelist doing something different, including from her previous works.
July 18, 2025
As much as I wanted to like this book, I did not. It reminded me of The Crying of Lot 49 in that there was so much stuff being thrown at the reader - it was hard to find purchase. I suppose the use of voice is impressive and there were times when the book was humorous. Other than voice, however, I don't really know what the book was about other than self-reflection of a person with multiple personalities. I felt like I needed more of a narrative. If there was one, it eluded me.
Read
July 20, 2025Stopped reading during Thursday. Sick of people casually referencing Israel as if it’s a legitimate and uncontraversial thing + I got annoyed by the constant reassurance that yes ALL these women find this man sooooooo hot
August 3, 2025
I admire Oyeyemi’s creativity and whimsy, even if at some points it completely lost me
October 3, 2025
No, I didn't finish it. Despite a killer blurb, I just could not get interested. My second book by this author, and I'm giving up -- I didn't enjoy the first one, either.
October 8, 2025
What fun. Told over seven days, through diary entries written by each of the seven personalities sharing the body of Kinga Sikora. The seven Kingas, Kinga-A through Kinga-G, each own a single day each week, and they dutifully record the happenings of that day so that the sister Kingas will be up to speed when their own day rolls around. But something significant seems to be brewing for the coming Sunday, the birthday/saint’s day of OG Kinga.
Oyeyemi’s novels have consistently hit a sweet spot for me. The stories are always unusual, always unexpected, full of intriguing characters, and beautifully written.
Oyeyemi’s novels have consistently hit a sweet spot for me. The stories are always unusual, always unexpected, full of intriguing characters, and beautifully written.
November 15, 2025
The idea had potential but the execution was too confusing and weird. I don’t understand Kinga’s life- why is she involved in some weird crime family fantasy? (If she’s even involved at all! No way of knowing if that was even happening)
August 28, 2025
Ugh, yet another book that could have been great if it was good. Earlier this year I was blown away by Helen Oyeyemi's brilliant debut novel White is for Witching, so A New New Me ended up becoming one of my most anticipated releases of 2025. Unfortunately, I just didn’t like it at all. This book presents itself as a some sort of mystery/weird fiction crossover, but in reality it is an absurdist comedy of errors, which mostly consists of pointless meandering, and is too quirky for its own good. The part about the Perfumer and Oyeyemi wasting my time on her perfunctory analysis of Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence made me want to put my head through the wall. Actually, I wish I rewatched Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence instead of reading this book. After my initial experience with the author, I thought I definitely discovered a new fave, but A New New Me sadly suggests otherwise. I am also tired of being baited by interested premises that go nowhere, because it seems to happen in every other book. Ugh indeed!
August 22, 2025
A New New Me by Helen Oyeyemi follows Kinga Sikora, a young woman with a Kinga for each day of the week. Kinga A reigns on Monday, on Tuesday Kinga B takes over, and so forth up until Kinga G on Sunday. Each Kinga writes a summary of the day in a notebook so the next Kinga can be up to speed.
One Monday, Kinga A is shocked when she discovers a man tied up in her pantry. There are no notes as to who he is or what happened, which leads Kinga A to believe another Kinga could be plotting her destruction.
This is my first time reading a book by Helen Oyeyemi, and her voice is one of a kind. I really enjoyed it, however, I did sometimes find myself getting lost and having to re read certain sections. I'd rate this book a four out of five stars. Helen Oyeyemi is definitely an author I would like to read more from.
ARC copy won via a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to Goodreads and Riverhead for allowing me to read this and leave an honest review.
One Monday, Kinga A is shocked when she discovers a man tied up in her pantry. There are no notes as to who he is or what happened, which leads Kinga A to believe another Kinga could be plotting her destruction.
This is my first time reading a book by Helen Oyeyemi, and her voice is one of a kind. I really enjoyed it, however, I did sometimes find myself getting lost and having to re read certain sections. I'd rate this book a four out of five stars. Helen Oyeyemi is definitely an author I would like to read more from.
ARC copy won via a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to Goodreads and Riverhead for allowing me to read this and leave an honest review.
September 2, 2025
Helen Oyeyemi is such a FORCE. Even when I don't understand what's going in, I'm never ever bored. This book— which travels through the days of the week as narrated by the seven different 'alters' of a woman with DID, whose various personalities each front a specific day of the week and keep a journal so the other six can keep up with what they missed— is an absolute onion of a story. When you think it's absurd, that you're veering into no man's land, you are actually in a spiral. About construction of the SELF.
Ostensibly this story presents the mystery of finding a man tied up and locked in the pantry, and peppers in several acquaintances who seem suspiciously knowledgeable about Kinga, but what I enjoyed most was the way each alter observed the others, adding more and more flesh as we went along. You really fall into the perspective trap only to be yanked back out. Hypocrisies, idiosyncrasies, rewritten narratives, everything gets dug up. Is it that the alter of the day doesn't see their situation/relationships clearly...? Or is it an intentional bait and switch because the other facets of Kinga will Nitpick...? Or is it just commentary on the navigating of living as a system, when you only have one day of the week, every week, and also seemingly do not want to share a life with neither friends/lovers nor with the other angles of yourself?
There are such interesting possibilities explored in A New New Me on the line of how we interact with ourselves, the face(s) we put forward, and how we construct those faces so even we are fooled by them. The process of becoming-after-trauma is fascinating in here! The seven alter Kingas (A-G) regard themselves as being temporary, living in a limbo which won't last forever, and chronicle their suspicions of each other which indeed belies their anxiety about being lost. Several of them reckon with the idea that the 'original' Kinga is lost, not among them. They comb the ethics of having social bonds. They're fiercely jealous, possessive, protective, intuitive—but in ways that clash. Kooky kinky fun 🎂
Last thing I wanna address is the Israel reference others have mentioned: it did shock me and I don't think the 'joke' (on the artificiality of creativity/authenticity, because shakshuka, a North African dish, needing to live up to the 'Tel Aviv standard' is indeed as ridiculous as the idea that there's a 'best bowl of porridge' to be found at a downtown hot spot called 'The Oat Bar'—and these two dishes are in conversation with each other) landed. It was jarring and abrupt, honestly. So I didn't love that. But moving on.
Ostensibly this story presents the mystery of finding a man tied up and locked in the pantry, and peppers in several acquaintances who seem suspiciously knowledgeable about Kinga, but what I enjoyed most was the way each alter observed the others, adding more and more flesh as we went along. You really fall into the perspective trap only to be yanked back out. Hypocrisies, idiosyncrasies, rewritten narratives, everything gets dug up. Is it that the alter of the day doesn't see their situation/relationships clearly...? Or is it an intentional bait and switch because the other facets of Kinga will Nitpick...? Or is it just commentary on the navigating of living as a system, when you only have one day of the week, every week, and also seemingly do not want to share a life with neither friends/lovers nor with the other angles of yourself?
There are such interesting possibilities explored in A New New Me on the line of how we interact with ourselves, the face(s) we put forward, and how we construct those faces so even we are fooled by them. The process of becoming-after-trauma is fascinating in here! The seven alter Kingas (A-G) regard themselves as being temporary, living in a limbo which won't last forever, and chronicle their suspicions of each other which indeed belies their anxiety about being lost. Several of them reckon with the idea that the 'original' Kinga is lost, not among them. They comb the ethics of having social bonds. They're fiercely jealous, possessive, protective, intuitive—but in ways that clash. Kooky kinky fun 🎂
Last thing I wanna address is the Israel reference others have mentioned: it did shock me and I don't think the 'joke' (on the artificiality of creativity/authenticity, because shakshuka, a North African dish, needing to live up to the 'Tel Aviv standard' is indeed as ridiculous as the idea that there's a 'best bowl of porridge' to be found at a downtown hot spot called 'The Oat Bar'—and these two dishes are in conversation with each other) landed. It was jarring and abrupt, honestly. So I didn't love that. But moving on.
May 13, 2025
The writing style of this book is brilliant, and I absolutely fell in love with Kinga… all the Kingas. Oyeyemi is truly the Calvino of our time… unfortunately that does mean that sometimes I get properly lost. And this one was often quite perplexing. But I still enjoyed it even when I didn’t really know what was going on because of how pleasant it is to hear each Kinga yap away
dnf
June 16, 2025dnf at p.115 - if I told you I knew what this book was about, I would be lying
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September 8, 2025I have a strange relationship with Oyeyemi's work. Sometimes, I find her whimsy hilarious and refreshing; other times, it pisses me off. It might be because of stuff in my life that's currently stacked up as precariously as the cups on the cover, not least attending demonstrations against an increasingly violent authoritarian regime in Serbia, but I found the novel rather though going. It made me chuckle here and there, but I really wanted - needed - to laugh. I'm sure it's just bad timing, and I'm looking forward to Oyeyemi's next one.
October 28, 2025
A woman’s life has each day of the week controlled by a different version of her (so 7 in total), who talk to one another via diary entry. This book was somewhat difficult to decipher in my opinion but also so intensely provocative and unhinged and weird and fun. I thought the conclusion was if not strange at least a bit subdued, but in general I was a happy camper and am intrigued to read more by this author!
September 2, 2025
Right on the borderline of "good concept, bad execution," and "nice try, better luck next time." I'm not exactly sure where I fall on it, but I straddle the line because at least it was interesting. I'm willing to give credit for a big swing even if it didn't land for me personally.
September 9, 2025
Dynamic voices and worldly absurdity make this diary from a Polish woman inhabited by 7 different selves a riddling, unpredictable, twisty tale: befuddling, but strangely so fun.
November 23, 2025
my one star review is generous! if this book was more than 200 pages i would have DNFed it.
was the author attempting to write an absurdist novel? if so, they are miles away from hitting that mark. the writing style made me feel like i was truly going insane, all the characters are lacking depth and likability, and the conclusion feels like a slap in the face (that is if the reader perseveres and reaches the end).
was the author attempting to write an absurdist novel? if so, they are miles away from hitting that mark. the writing style made me feel like i was truly going insane, all the characters are lacking depth and likability, and the conclusion feels like a slap in the face (that is if the reader perseveres and reaches the end).
May 15, 2025
Having just finished Helen Oyeyemi’s newest novel ‘A New New Me’, I have to say: I love her, and every strange, bizarre, funny thing she’s writes.
A New New Me is the story of seven Kinga’s (Kinga A through F) each of whom lives a specific day of the week, taking over for Original Kinga, who gave up her conscious control during a particularly disappointing school reunion. The novel is told over the course of seven days, with each Kinga writing a diary entry for the others to read, so that everyone knows what’s happened that day.
On this particular week though, Kinga A discovers a man tied up in their apartment.
This novel is so playful - the quirky characterisation is spot on, and Oyeyemi brings has the seven same-but-different women to life. There’s slapstick comedy, meandering anecdotes, and a tantalising central mystery, which the Kinga’s will work out, if they just all stop arguing for a minute.
Super fun - now time to get my hands on Parasol Against The Axe?
A New New Me is the story of seven Kinga’s (Kinga A through F) each of whom lives a specific day of the week, taking over for Original Kinga, who gave up her conscious control during a particularly disappointing school reunion. The novel is told over the course of seven days, with each Kinga writing a diary entry for the others to read, so that everyone knows what’s happened that day.
On this particular week though, Kinga A discovers a man tied up in their apartment.
This novel is so playful - the quirky characterisation is spot on, and Oyeyemi brings has the seven same-but-different women to life. There’s slapstick comedy, meandering anecdotes, and a tantalising central mystery, which the Kinga’s will work out, if they just all stop arguing for a minute.
Super fun - now time to get my hands on Parasol Against The Axe?
July 23, 2025
One of the characters in this book mentions something about infusing joy into sentences, and that's just what Helen Oyeyemi does. I take my sweet time reading her books in attempts to absorb as much of her magic as possible. I'm in awe of the way she injects each sentence with a clever playfulness that never feels contrived or inaccessible.
The star of this book is Kinga, a woman with multiple personalities that each occupy a different day of the week. We begin on Monday with Kinga-Alojzia, who discovers a strange man she doesn't recognize bound to a chair in her pantry. We end the week on Sunday with Kinga-Genovéva, who finds herself on a phone call with a perfumer who seems to have a romantic connection to Friday's Kinga-Eliska.
For me, this book is more about the journey than the destination. I sunk right in and delighted in every moment.
The star of this book is Kinga, a woman with multiple personalities that each occupy a different day of the week. We begin on Monday with Kinga-Alojzia, who discovers a strange man she doesn't recognize bound to a chair in her pantry. We end the week on Sunday with Kinga-Genovéva, who finds herself on a phone call with a perfumer who seems to have a romantic connection to Friday's Kinga-Eliska.
For me, this book is more about the journey than the destination. I sunk right in and delighted in every moment.
October 27, 2025
This weird book was such a fun reading experience thanks to a friend giving me the heads up that there were seven chapters in this book, one for each day of the week, so if you can, start this on a Monday and then read one per day! Kinga is a young woman who has seven different versions of herself that have essentially been delegated to one each day per week: Kinga A on Monday, Kinga B on Tuesday, etc. They write each other notes to know what happened the day before/week before, but it’s clear these versions have much different personalities. It wasn’t essential to me that I remembered every nuance of the various characters, but I loved this concept. My first Oyeyemi, but I really enjoyed the weirdness!
September 1, 2025
What even is a self anyway?
September 14, 2025
eye roll. wish i didn’t bring this on vacation
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