A New New Me

Who I am at 9 a.m. on Monday morning is a world away from the version of me in a club at the ungodly hours of Saturday night. In her latest work, A New New Me, Helen Oyeyemi takes this concept of multiple selves to the nth degree. Set in Prague, the novel follows 40-year-old Kinga, whose consciousness is split into seven different personalities, one for each day of the week. Kinga A takes Mondays, Kinga B has Tuesdays, and so on. Each chapter is a daily journal entry from a different Kinga’s perspective, taking the reader through a week in their curious joint life.

Oyeyemi skilfully crafts unique voices for the different selves – Kinga A is very ‘Type A’, while Saturday’s laidback Kinga E describes herself as ‘Team Toxic’. The most intriguing part of the novel is when the Kingas fight amongst themselves. Kinga A is the self-appointed leader, much to the chagrin of Kinga B, who tries to persuade the others to mutiny. Meanwhile, the weekend Kingas feel sidelined by the weekday Kingas because they don’t work. As we journey through the week, we realise that these disputes boil down to distrust. No Kinga has a memory of what another self does, so they are wholly reliant on reading the others’ journal entries to know what their shared body has been up to. But what if a Kinga misses out some details, mistakenly or otherwise? What if they wake up to find unexpected things in their flat, or wake up in someone else’s bed altogether? What if, as Kinga A does at the end of Chapter One, they find an unknown man tied up in their basement?

Oyeyemi explores these dynamics thoroughly in under 300 pages. We learn about the Kingas’ struggle to develop meaningful relationships outside their own internal world: ‘There’s no getting attached for you, even if you want that,’ one Kinga tells another in a note. ‘You’d never be the one to let us all down.’ Through detailing the Kingas’ contrasting psyches, Oyeyemi touches on the inner conflicts that can split all of us, whether it be self-doubt, yearning for what we can’t have, or the parts of ourselves that we want to hide away.

Glimpses into Kinga’s past suggest that she probably has dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder. Refreshingly, Oyeyemi is uninterested in ‘fixing’ Kinga by reintegrating her alters into one consciousness. The multi-perspective structure of the novel plants you straight into the viewpoints of Kingas A-G, so the reader accepts their reality immediately. Unlike M. Night Shamalyan’s Split, which is probably the most famous (and sensationalised) fictional portrayal of DID, the reader is not a voyeur but rather experiences the Kingas’ slice of life alongside them. Now that people with DID have found a community on TikTok, I would love to see their opinions of A New New Me.

DID typically stems from childhood trauma, but Oyeyemi writes Kinga’s world with buoyant, chaotic energy. As each Kinga goes about her day-in-the-life, we meet a host of wacky characters and bizarre happenings, including but not limited to: parachuting tortoises, burglars who fold their victims into suitcases, teeth that are formed in meteorites, a church-themed male strip club and séances to contact people who are alive and kicking. Oyeyemi’s imagination is joyously rampant as she depicts a Prague that is relentlessly whimsical.

Some readers may become frustrated that, with these eccentric flourishes, the novel strays down roads that lead to nowhere. The novel is as mischievous and multiplicitous as its protagonist. Whether you find all the absurdist hijinks entertaining or bothersome is entirely down to your sense of humour, so A New New Me may not be for everyone. But if you like novels that take you to unexpected places for the joy of the ride, then you will be charmed by Oyeyemi’s fanciful prose.

Waterstones: A New New Me

Liberty Martin

Liberty Martin is a Creative Writing Master of Studies student at the University of Oxford.