A New New Me is a novel by Helen Oyeyemi.
Finished on: 25.2.2026

Plot:
Kinga has her own strategies to make it for any given week. Every day of the week belongs to another Kinga. On Mondays, Kinga-A tries to live a very standard life and to take care of business. On Tuesdays, Kinga-B gets through purely with sarcasm. On Wednesdays, Kinga-C freelances as a very special kind of tourist guide. On Thursdays, Kinga-D’s infinite patience gets her most of the annoying appointments and a lot of baths. On Fridays, Kinga-E’s perfume obsession keeps her busy. On Saturdays, Kinga-F likes to party. And finally, on Sundays, Kinga-G mostly rests. But when Kinga-A finds a man tied up in her pantry on Monday evening, it is the start of a very strange week for everybody.

A New New Me is a comedy that did have me laughing, but also left me a little unsatisfied. It is full of wonderfully strange ideas but it never really came together for me.

When I read the description of A New New Me, I was reminded of Freshwater, but despite both being books about a woman split into several parts, they could not be more different. Where Freshwater is a harrowing tale about severe trauma and ist long-lasting effects and one of the most accurate descriptions of Dissociative Identity Disorder, A New New Me is not bothered with a lot of psychological reasoning or trauma, focusing on the absurd instead.

And there is a whole lot of absurdity to be had, and Oyeyemi obviously relishes in furthering it. From street gangs that break into people’s houses to stuff the into suitcases filled with loose teeth to Kinga-C’s work in tourist guide roleplay (or anybody’s job here), this is a very different Prague, but also not entirely out there.

At times, though, this relentless onslaught of bizarre events and character turns makes the book feel a little unmoored, though. I kept waiting and slightly hoping for an acknowledgement of the grave nature of DID, but while it is hinted at that the original Kinga didn’t have the happiest childhood, nothing ever comes from that. Instead the book stays firmly in comedy territory which is not the greatest representation. But at least none of the Kinga’s is a serial killer, so that’s something.

Oyeyemi’s prose is often really good, but it focuses on details a lot and I found myself skimming a couple of times which I usually don’t do. (I am a slow and thorough reader more often than not.) Still, she has a gift for observations and a good sense of timing. I didn’t find the perspectives of the various Kingas all that distinct, but then again, they are the same and they aren’t so this might as well be on purpose. There are certainly differences.

There was a lot I appreciated about the book. I was also confused at times, but when you roll with it, it will roll you right out of the confusion again as well. On a sidenote, I had to keep reminding myself that Kinga is a white woman which was also a kind of special experience because usually we (as people in a racist, white-dominant society) default to assume whiteness. But the combination of a Black author and the name Kinga (that is short for Kunigunde but could as well be an African name) gave me the opportunity to turn the tables on that bias and it was fun.

Altogether, it was a good book that I didn’t connect with as much as I would have liked. I was mostly entertained by reading it, but there were parts where it dragged a little. And the solution felt a little random to me and left me without much sense of closure.

Summarizing: good but has weaknesses.