A New New Me - by Helen Oyeyemi (Hardcover)

About the Book

"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"--

Book Synopsis

"Equal parts mischievous, moony, and tart." ― The New Yorker

"Her weirdest and funniest yet -- in the best way possible." ― Los Angeles Times

"Audacious, incisive and very funny." ― Daily Mail

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?

Review Quotes

"A writer whose style is equal parts mischievous, moony, and tart. Her books occupy the borderlands of realism and fable, where the plausible brushes up against the impossible, and the laws of narrative logic are bent just enough to let in the surreal...Some novels insist on being read as prescriptions for living; Oyeyemi's simply depicts a process: one splinter of a soul briefly gains control of a body, and goes out to be engulfed by the world." ―The New Yorker

"[A] magical conceit becomes a surreal, occasionally sanguinary romp as the dubious partnership of a woman's distinct identities (one for each day of the week) unravels in the shadow of conspiracy." --NPR

"Oyeyemi is such a confident writer, her details always specific and alive, that you know you're in good hands even if you're not entirely sure what material those hands are made of, where they're taking you, or how much they'll jiggle and jostle you along the way...A New New Me is thoroughly enjoyable and is very likely to reward repeat readings. I'm off to start it over again myself." --Los Angeles Times

"Screams 'commercial break out' . . . An audacious, incisive and very funny novel about self knowledge in today's tech mediated age." ― Daily Mail

"A comedy about the masks we wear, if you will, as well as an existential mystery [...] The denouement, when it finally comes, is so gloriously absurd, you can't help but salute." ― Guardian

"Any ideas of where the plot might be going will most definitely be derailed by Oyeyemi's dizzyingly funny narrative. But the story's crowning jewel is the author's ability to create seven unique voices belonging to one individual." ― New Statesman

"A brilliantly fun set-up . . . In a sense it becomes a whodunnit as told through a kaleidoscope . . . There is hardly a sentence here that won't make you smile." ― Observer

About the Author

Helen Oyeyemi is the author of nine novels, including Boy, Snow, Bird, a finalist for the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, winner of the PEN Open Book Award.