'The way that people feel changes everything,' she says. She is Catholic but 'in it for the mysticism,' and she says she's afraid of cats because she can't account for their intentions. She keeps talismans - keys that don't open anything, teapots, certain scents. I'm seeing this as a long game - I want to write as many books as I'm allowed to publish.'Įlephants are just one aspect of her intricate personal symbology. 'Otherwise it's going to stop me from doing what I want to do. I just have to brush it off now,' she says.

'It's getting embarrassing because I'm getting older and older. Oyeyemi was something of a child literary star, having written her first book at 18 'instead of studying for A-levels.' But now that she's almost 30 and on her 5th book, the label is beginning to chafe. She consents to pose with a cardboard mockup of the book cover, but she holds it up so it covers everything except her eyes. Her fifth novel, Boy, Snow, Bird, is coming out in March. She lives in Prague, but her publisher has flown her to New York for a three-day publicity blitz, which has left her looking drained and a little bit hunted. ('That,' Oyeyemi said later, 'was not a good omen.') Anthony Weiner walked by, face set and nostrils flared. We have come from a media lunch, at one of those restaurants where, when you order ravioli, they give you exactly four pieces arranged tastefully on a plate. When she laughs, it has the force of an unleashing - harsh, wild, almost a cackle. One-on-one, in bright light, she solidifies, densifies, and even becomes a little bit loud. The next day, we sit in a quiet restaurant on the Upper West Side. she will appear at certain times and in certain places, and at other times she will recede into a disinterested dark.' She's talking quietly but with great concentration about elephants, which she says are her spirit animals. Fox: 'There's something ghostlike about this girl. Cheshire cat-like, she reminded me of a line from her fourth novel, Mr. The first time I met her, it was in a bar so dark that all I could see were her eyes and very white teeth. Her books are re-worked fairy tales, the gruesome kind, with beheadings and wicked stepmothers and ghosts and death, death, and more death (though, once dead, her characters don't always stay that way). How?īeing haunted seems like it might be an occupational hazard for Helen Oyeyemi.

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Boy, Snow, Bird Author Helen Oyeyemi

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi