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Book Review

Oseloka Obaze*

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

The Icarus Girl

Helen Oyeyemi

(ISBN: 0-385-51383-6; Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday, New York, London, Toronto, 2005; pp. 337; Price, $23.95)

Available at: Barnes & Noble.com

“Oyeyemi has surely taken her first step in a literary journey that could last a lifetime and countless books. The crispness of her dialogue and picturesque sceneries lend unremitting credence to her writing potentialities.”

The Icarus Girl, the title of Helen Oyeyemi’s debut novel is a loss leader. It would have been totally proper, unsurprising as well understandable, had she elected to title the book “Ogbanje” or “Abiku.” Presumably, marketing considerations and the pressures of ensuring the book’s universal appeal may have instructed otherwise. It is also understandable and not too difficult to decipher why Oyeyemi elected to draw on Greek mythology for the title of her work, that essentially belongs to the genre that explores the darker side of contemporary African mythology; think strategy, think symmetry! The well known fable of how Daedalus and his son Icarus ended up in the Labyrinth, and importantly, how their flight to fantasy led to their building of artificial wings themselves, has a striking parallel to Oyeyemi’s main character and her overall plot. In fact, the winged child on the cover of her book is a dead give away. Nonetheless, the critical link between the Greek mythology and Oyeyemi’s work seems to be the ability of her protagonist Jessamy “Jess” Harrison to invent images just as Daedalus and his son Icarus did, light years ago.

The Icarus Girl, which was published earlier in the year in the UK, made its US debut earlier this week (20 June) courtesy of Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. An admix, this book is anchored on an ounce of Greek and a ton of African myths, the demands and vagaries of living in two continents and struggles to contend with the insidious nuances of the two societies. The Nigerian-born author Helen Oyeyemi, who was born in Nigeria in 1984, but has called England home since 1988, is still well at home with her roots. Currently a student at the Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, she completed The Icarus Girl, her first novel, when she was nineteen and two years before sent went into college. This seemingly vaguely camouflaged ethno-classic biography, will perhaps be best appreciated by those conversant with African mythology, norms and pervading superstitions, especially as they pertain to the psychology of schizophrenic or rowdy children who exhibit uncanny, frenzied imaginations and inexplicable peevishness, the sort continuously exhibited by the protagonist in this novel. Any reader will barely go beyond the first decade of pages before sensing the presence of an Abiku trait in “Jess” Harrison.

For a debut novel from a teenager, The Icarus Girl is charmingly interesting. Its ultimate value is to those Nigerian parents, who reside abroad and continually resist sending or taking their children to their homeland. But then, the book also offers enough excuses and traumas not to. The novel parodies everything diasporic Nigerians loath about their country, and then some. In this context, two points are stark. First, Oyeyemi could only have written this book about Nigeria and some of its customs with such intimate details, given her first hand knowledge. Second, Jess being dragged off to visit Nigeria is also a pointer to her parents’ understanding of the value of familiarizing her with her African roots. This may also be a way for the author to reflect her own values and priorities.

The plot of The Icarus Girl unfolds around Jessamy Harrison, an easily distressed eight-year-old who resides in suburban Kent with her parents. It is difficult to know, but can be safely assumed that Jess’s problems arise partly from being an only child. But this does not explain her lack of popularity in school, nor her unceasing and embarrassing public tantrums, a trait not quite uncommon in lone and bratty children her age. Being alone, Jess as expected, is consigned to voluntarily spending hours in her bedroom or engaging in the escapism of hiding in the family cupboard, her habitual sanctuary. “She was sitting inside the cupboard on the landing, where the towels and other linen were kept, saying quietly to herself, I am in the cupboard.” (p.3) Jess Harrison, a bright but conflicted “half-and-half” child, who would be called a “mulatto” or “half cast” in the Nigeria context inoffensively without casing offense, given her dual parentage - an English father and a Nigerian mother- is unceasingly afflicted by her real or imagined affinity to a non-existent sibling. This clever interweave of dichotomy of culture and personality, is the foundation on which The Icarus Girl is constructed and unfurled.

But the real story comes into sight with the planned trip to Nigeria and the resistance that follows. Excited initially by the prospects of visiting Nigeria, Jess develops a cold feet and an attending trepidation. At the airport, she confronts a stranger symbolic of her anxiety: “Jess kept her eyes fixed on the woman, caught by her gaze, gradually growing frightened, as if somehow she could not look away or let this woman out of her sight. Would that be dangerous, to not look while being looked at? On the plane, Jess threw a tantrum. It was Nigeria. That was the problem. Nigeria felt ugly.” (p.9)

Cleverly straddling two worlds and divided loyalties, Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl is an idiosyncratic, double sided-mirror, in which it is unclear where the facts stop and the fiction begins. Since Ms. Oyeyemi wrote this book about adolescent girls in her post-adolescent years, the temptation to conclude that this is a masked autobiography is irresistible. If this book is not a rendition of a personal experience – a looking-glass-self of sorts- then, it is, perhaps, based on that of a close relative or friend; which raises the point of how well the book would have done if it had been categorized as non-fiction. But Africans loathe washing their dirty family linens in public or making public, such intensely private family health matters. Whatever be the case, one must give credit where it is due.

What it was about Nigeria that was the tripwire for Jess’s tantrum is never mentioned, but is unveiled by sleight in the course of time, when she meets a girl named Titilola or TillyTilly in her grandfather’s compound. More of apparition, since only Jess can see her, the two girls bond and mesh as only kindred spirits do. Ensnarled, their friendship evolves into a dependency; “O God, please help me stay friends with TillyTilly, please, pleas, please. Let me keep her. She is my only friend. I have had no one else” (p.77). Though this is never directly mentioned or suggested, except for the references to “ Ibeji carving” and “Ibeji woman”, in Nigerian folklore and especially Oyeyemi’s Yoruba tribe, Jess would have been clearly tagged an Abiku – a changeling. Jess’s affliction with endless bouts of anxiety, screaming fits and frights, which often led to extreme tantrums that subside only to ebb into stints of extreme reclusion, are widely recognized precursors to the attending convulsion in an Abiku. If one needed any further evidence of the real subject matter, it is offered by Jess begging TillyTilly to “show me how to be like you” (p. 112). Then again, heir choice meeting place, Jess’s grandfather’s backyard is a telling point.

Conversely, the friendship between Jess and ubiquitous TillyTilly also breeds nastiness, possessiveness, trauma and very discomfiting dialogues. Matters become heady when TillyTilly reveals to Jess in confidence, that she had a twin sister who died at birth. From thereon, Jess’s world spins uncontrollably in what modern science might have been compelled to diagnose as a form of psychiatric disorder; but what the locals fully comprehend and routinely speak reservedly of, not necessarily in spiritual terms, but with circumspection arising out of deeply ingrained knowledge of traditional rituals and norms, and of the mindfulness that a hash approach would lead the disturbed child to flee the present to the netherworld, only to return after a brief hiatus to further torment her family. When Jess’s grandfather Gbenga Oyegbebi ventures to admonish Jess about TillyTilly, he does so only euphemistically; in a nuanced fashion and with the compassion and precaution of one who fully understood the undertones of her anguish and problems and their implications. So he tells his granddaughter, “Two hungry people should never make friends. If they do they eat each other up…Only two people who are full can be friends. They don’t want anything from each other except friendship...” (p. 248-9).

The interplay of Jess’s manifestations of a changeling’s characteristic with clear or insinuated notions of twinship, leaves convincing evidence, of the author’s knowledge of the subject matter, either from direct experience, discussions within her family and friends or by research. Her pointers are also unequivocal. When Jess’s grandfather calls her by her Yoruba name Wuraola, she responds thus; “Should she answer this name, and by doing so steal the identity of someone who belonged here?” During a dialogue between Jess and her invisible friend, TillyTilly’s words proves to be the smoking gun; “People who aren’t from the same place as us don’t understand about all that… I came to you in Ibadan because you were sad, and all by yourself. And I came to you here because you were sad and all by yourself. . You had no twin anymore. And you wanted me to come.” (p.226). Oyeyemi’s dexterity in handling the subject matter, leads this writer and would perhaps, lead some readers too, to conclude that her awareness of the “Abiku” syndrome could hardly be coincidental or happenstance.

Helen Oyeyemi may never be acclaimed as a child prodigy nor has she arrived at the juncture of being cast in the mould of J.K. Rowling of the Harry Potter fame, but she has surely taken her first step in a literary journey that could last a life time and countless books. Her rendering of The Icarus Girl, will surely elicit a strong debate as to whether her work is based on her first hand personal experience or on her vivid, multifarious imagination, grasp of cultural nuances on which she predicates the whims of her protagonist, and her daring bravado to think and write in shocking and petrifying language. Beyond that, there is no debate whatsoever about her accomplishment. Either way, she has already carved a niche for herself. The Icarus Girl might prove a haunting and disturbing novel for some, while quite an easy and flowing read for those conversant with its subliminal subject matter and those unperturbed by spooky stories.

For a rookie, Oyeyemi gets credit for not being languid in style, language and substance. The crispness of her dialogue and picturesque sceneries lend unremitting credence to her writing potentialities. As the Financial Times noted of her worthy effort, “Oyeyemi looks set to claim her place in a list of English-language Nigerian authors that include Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, and, more recently Ben Okiri.” I concur. Oyeyemi is a tribute to her fatherland, Nigeria, and a welcome addition to the likes of Chimamanda Adiche of the Purple Hibiscus fame and Chris Abani, the author of Graceland.

Sunday June 26, 2005

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*Mr. Oseloka Obaze, an aspiring writer, is a member of the Kwenu.com Book Review Forum, which is dedicated to the promotion of books with Igbo and Afrocentric themes. He is also a supporting Member of the African Writers Endowment (AWE). Since 1999 he has been on the editorial board of INYEAKA, the journal of Songhai Charities, Inc., a New Jersey community-based charity founded and run by Nigerians based in New York Tri-state area in the United States. He is also on the editorial board of The Amaka Gazette, the journal of the Christ the King College, Onitsha Alumni Association in America. His collection of poems, “Regarscent Past: A Collection of Poems” was among the top three finalists in the poetry category in the African Writers Endowment Publishing Grant Program for 2004. He reviews books strictly as a hobby.