The Icarus Girl

Oyeyemi wrote this novel while doing her A-levels, and is currently at Cambridge

By Ellen Waddell

The Icarus Girl is a fantasy story dressed up as a thought provoking look at cultural confusion. It focuses on Jessamy Harrison, an incredibly sensitive and imaginative eight year old girl and the restless spirit she unwittingly befriends called Titola.

Jessamy is of English and Nigerian descent, and is caught between two opposing cultural identities. When she first encounters Titola in her mother’s homeland of Nigeria, she clings to her hoping at last to have found a friend as confused about her placing in the world as she is. However Titola begins to cause havoc in her life, leaving her father doubting her sanity and her mother becoming convinced she is a witch.

The story is narrated in whole by Jessamy, causing many pitfalls in the understanding of the themes and messages Oyeyemi is trying to get across, partly due to the fact the language and perspective is from that of a naïve young girl.

The small benefits are that there are fresh angles on the role reversals in child and parent relationships – Jess frequently wonders why she is continually lying to comfort her mother. But the reader is never sure of the underlying problems in this dysfunctional family which may have caused Jessamy to become psychologically unhinged which Oyeyemi only hints at.

Once you get the feel it is going to become a memorable exploration of cultural confusion in the family unit, Oyeyemi switched back to insinuating that Titola is a real entity not an outlet for Jess’s anger, resulting in a memorable novel become a confusing and inane one.