![]() While visiting Nigeria, Jess befriends TillyTilly, a mysterious little girl who then shows up in England as well. It was hard to get a read on her parents’ relationship and what had drawn them together (and kept them together). Each member of her little family seems to move in its own lonely orbit, occasionally bumping up against one another. She’s lonely, friendless, and prone to heavy anxiety and screaming fits. It is clear from the beginning that Jess is smart and troubled. Her family lives in England but head to Nigeria to visit her mother’s family for the first time in years. Jessamy Harrison is eight-years-old, the daughter of a Nigerian mother and English father. I’m not sure if this is entirely true (since my knowledge of Nigeria is mostly limited to the books of other authors) but Nigeria is much more central to this story than I’ve noticed in Oyeyemi’s other work. My gut reaction to the novel is that it is more Nigerian. None of that is surprising, having read Oyeyemi previously, especially her most recent story collection but Icarus Girl seems to exist on a slightly different, stranger plane. ![]() Icarus Girl is a strange, surreal, sometimes confusing novel. I’ve read one novel ( Boy, Snow, Bird) and a short story collection ( What is not Yours is not Yours reviewed here) from Helen Oyeyei and it was interesting to go back and read her first novel. ![]()
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