Mr Cogito by the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert is one of those books you return to every year. But every now and again, I get blindsided by a writer. Who are your contemporary favourites?Ĭontemporary writers, eh? It feels difficult to find what I need nowadays. Your work has been compared to Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson ( The Opposite House comes from one of her poems). She makes it a very tense drama – will she be revealed? – and your stomach just coils up reading it. I didn't research that much, but I do remember being absolutely fascinated by Nella Larsen's 1929 novel, Passing. It had to be an American story because 'passing' is an American phenomenon.ĭid you do much research into black families that managed to pass as white? And in Snow White that is very explicitly connected with whiteness. I also wanted to look at the aesthetics of beauty – who gets to be deemed the fairest of them all. I also wanted to explore the feminine gaze, and how women handle beauty without it being to do with men, per se.The women all want approval from each other, and are trying to read each other. A lot of terrible things can come out of that disappointment. Every wicked stepmother story is to do with the way women disappoint each other, and encourage each other, across generations.

With genuineness, grace and confidence, Helen Oyeyemi brings us into Jessamy's world and makes the fantastic seductively tangible.For me Boy, Snow, Bird is is very much a wicked stepmother story. The Icarus Girl is a haunting tale about doubles - both in a real and spiritual sense. Tilly, it seems, may have come from the Spirit World to be the sister that Jess never had - no matter the means.

One day TillyTilly informs Jess that she, Jess, had had a twin who was stillborn. Gradually, Tilly's presence in Jessamy's life becomes more and more disturbing she appears out of nowhere, makes fearful things happen to those who give Jess trouble. Believing that a change from her English environment might be the perfect antidote to Jess's troubles, her parents whisk her off to Nigeria to visit relatives.īut Jessamy's plight is only beginning when she meets Titiola, or TillyTilly, who happens to be invisible to everyone else but perfectly real to Jess. Jessamy is precocious but has difficulty getting along in school she throws tantrums seemingly at random and makes life a challenge for her parents.

Born to a British father and a Nigerian mother, she has forever felt like she doesn't belong. Jessamy 'Jess' Harrison is an eight year old caught between two worlds.

The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi