A new new me / Helen Oyeyemi.

By:

Oyeyemi, Helen [author.]

Material type: Text

TextPublisher: New York : Riverhead Books, 2025Description: pages cmContent type:

text

Media type:

unmediated

Carrier type:

volume

ISBN:

9780593718773

Genre/Form:

Novels.

Additional physical formats: Online version:: New new meDDC classification:

823/.92 23/eng/20240913

LOC classification:

PR6115.Y49 N49 2025

Summary: "A brilliant, playful new novel about identity and personality, from master storyteller Helen Oyeyemi. What if you had to share your body and life with six different versions of yourself? Kinga-Alojzia lives alone in Prague, but she's never lonely. A different personality takes up residence in her mind each day of the week. Every evening, that day's personality leaves written notes for the next day's self about what transpired. This all works quite well until the day that Kinga, who is Polish, becomes a Czech citizen. She wants to be a model member of her adopted country, but one of her selves seems to be plotting a takeover, scheming to rule them all. A captivating exploration of identity and multiplicity, A NEW NEW ME combines Helen Oyeyemi's crackling, exuberant prose with deep existential questions: What happens when your identities are at war with each other? How many versions of oneself can one self contain?"-- Provided by publisher.

List(s) this item appears in: Coming Soon Fiction notes: Click to open in new window

Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Shelving location	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Adult Book	Phillipsburg Free Public Library	Adult Fiction	New Books	FIC OYEYEMI	Ordered

Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the award-winning, bestselling "literary pied piper" ( The New York Times ) who brought us Boy, Snow, Bird comes a masterful story that asks: What if the different sides of your personality had trust issues with each other?

New Day, New You!

Kinga is a woman who is just trying to make it through the week. There's a Kinga for every day: 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.

How many versions of oneself can one self safely contain?

"A brilliant, playful new novel about identity and personality, from master storyteller Helen Oyeyemi. What if you had to share your body and life with six different versions of yourself? Kinga-Alojzia lives alone in Prague, but she's never lonely. A different personality takes up residence in her mind each day of the week. Every evening, that day's personality leaves written notes for the next day's self about what transpired. This all works quite well until the day that Kinga, who is Polish, becomes a Czech citizen. She wants to be a model member of her adopted country, but one of her selves seems to be plotting a takeover, scheming to rule them all. A captivating exploration of identity and multiplicity, A NEW NEW ME combines Helen Oyeyemi's crackling, exuberant prose with deep existential questions: What happens when your identities are at war with each other? How many versions of oneself can one self contain?"-- Provided by publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Oyeyemi (Parasol Against the Axe) unspools a confounding tale of a woman split seven ways. Kinga Sikora, 40, lives in Prague, where, each day of the week, a different version of her, named Kinga-A through Kinga-G, takes over her body and leads a completely different life. Each version records the day's events in a diary for the others to read, as they have no memories of each other's actions. Several of them scheme to wrest control from self-appointed leader Kinga-A, who works in a bank on Mondays and condescendingly chastises the others for such habits as ordering expensive takeout. Kinga-A also briefs the others about a strange outfit called the Luxury Enamel Posse, which breaks into homes and stuffs the occupants into suitcases along with a bunch of loose teeth and blank checks. What this all means remains elusive, but it provides context when Kinga-A discovers a handsome man named Jarda tied up in her pantry, who claims the posse is after him. On Friday, Kinga-E, a perfumer's muse, meets a fellow foreign woman named Milica, who turns out to be connected to Jarda, and the disparate threads spin wildly on their way to a surprising conclusion. The novel is hard to follow, but it's held together by hypnotic prose and a healthy dose of absurdism. Adventurous readers will enjoy following its twisty path. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Aug.)

Kirkus Book Review

A young woman with an identity for each day of the week must decide if her coping mechanism allows her to lead the life she desires. For a little more than a decade, Kinga Sikora has taken it one day of the week at a time. The Kinga who manages Mondays, Kinga-A, is the designated "squad leader," capable, efficient, and a little bossy. Kinga-B is a shrewd pessimist who resents Kinga-A's condescension. Kinga-C, an adventurous risk-taker. In total, there are eight Kingas, including the original, currently in retreat. We meet each woman in the pages of their collective diary, where they record memories for the benefit of other iterations--everything from appointments with their psychotherapist to details about their jobs, crushes, and preferences. Kinga-A frets that one identity is secretly plotting to take over for good on the occasion of their name day, forcing each successive Kinga to come clean about what they've really been up to with their time--and what they really want. This is Oyeyemi's second novel set in Prague, and the city seems to have encouraged her trickster storytelling instincts. The book is a surrealist romp, filled with money-laundering strip clubs, temperamental perfumers, handsome men hogtied in the pantry, and other oddities. Meanwhile, the truth about why Kinga has chosen her segmented life flits in and out of the periphery, never quite coming fully into view. Ultimately, it seems, the original Kinga wanted the freedom to change her story, but she couldn't accept that transformation felt forever out of reach. Oyeyemi offers us an existential farce that wrestles with what it means to reconcile all the pieces of yourself, especially when they're in constant disagreement about how best to live a life. There are more questions than answers in this dreamlike novel of dissociation--but that's also part of its thrill. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.