Vivid 'Icarus' charts a child's search for self
Helen Oyeyemi's remarkable first novel, ''The Icarus Girl," was written when the author was only 18 years old and should have been studying for her A-level exams in England. It reflects the Nigerian-born Oyeyemi's own troubled childhood growing up in Great Britain, clinically depressed, misunderstood at school, socially outcast, and suicidal by the age of 15. When a psychiatrist suggested to Oyeyemi's parents that they take her back to Nigeria for a long holiday (she'd been back only once since the age of 4), the sojourn proved immensely therapeutic and restorative. Oyeyemi maintains that it ''fixed her up," and it helped plant the seeds for the novel that has turned her into a literary sensation in Britain.
Like Oyeyemi herself, the novel's 8-year-old Jessamy ''Jess" Harrison is smart and precocious but troubled. Caught between the two worlds of her British father and her Nigerian mother, she feels pushed and pulled by the vicissitudes of ordinary life. Easily, almost pathologically overstimulated and overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the everyday world, she is prone to panic attacks, uncontrollable screaming fits and tantrums, after which she withdraws as a form of self-protection, trying to understand her puzzling complexity and muster her resources. ''Once you let people know anything about what you think, that's it, you're dead. Then they'll be jumping about in your mind, taking things out, holding them up to the light and killing them . . . thoughts are supposed to stay and grow in quiet dark places, like butterflies in cocoons."
Not surprisingly, school is a constant challenge, and friendships are tricky at best. Finally, Jess's parents, confused and concerned over their child's tempestuous mood swings, decide to whisk her away from her routine. Paralleling Oyeyemi's own journey, they take a protracted visit to Nigeria to acquaint Jess with her mother's family and the culture of her Nigerian ancestry. The connection with extended family, especially her grandfather, has a calming, centering effect on Jess, and she falls in love with the people and the land.
But at this point, with the appearance of a mysterious and mischievous little girl named Tilly, Oyeyemi's story veers into the realm of magic realism, drawing strongly on Nigerian mythology. A girl Jess's own age, Tilly appears out of nowhere one day, seeming to live by herself in an abandoned building on Tilly's family's estate. She comes and goes freely, yet is unnoticed by anyone but Jess. Tilly seems both simple and wise beyond her years, and she becomes Jess's playmate, protector, and confidante.
When Jess returns to England, she has trouble settling back into regular life, mourning the loss of her faraway friend. But when Tilly shows up at the back door one day, looking like an English schoolgirl and claiming she and her parents just moved into the neighborhood, reality gets seriously skewed. Just who is this little girl? When Jess learns she had a twin who died at childbirth, the questions become even more pressing. Is Tilly a lost double, a visitor from the spirit world, or an alter ego, a figment of Jess's fertile imagination?
As Tilly's visits become more insinuating and her pranks more threatening, the mystery and suspense of the story grow. But as Oyeyemi toys with our perceptions, she also strains credulity and ''The Icarus Girl" gets a bit far-fetched and tedious after a while. It's a beautifully written and hauntingly memorable debut novel that gets mired in mysticism. The most vivid, sharply etched, and authentic writing is firmly centered in reality, in the heartbreaking descriptions of a young mixed-race child grappling not only with cultural dislocation, but with the tribulations of growing up and self-identity in a complicated world. 