The Icarus Girl

Oyeyemi wrote the novel when she was 18 while studying for her A levels at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School.[1][2][3] She wrote the book on her parent's computer on weekends, after school and in the middle of the night.[4]

The New York Times said that the novel is "Deserving of all its praise, this is a masterly first novel -- and a nightmarish story that will haunt Oyeyemi's readers for months to come."[1] Ali Smith writing for The Guardian observed: "The Icarus Girl's real tragic inevitability lies in the fracture of childhood into the shock of maturity itself; a bleakness in the light, bright state of childhood is the real subject of this curiously wild, curiously blithely-voiced novel...Its simple-seeming rewrite of the simplest of imaginative impulses goes further than an analysis of cultural and personal displacement to suggest that no childhood is ever normal, that the strains between parents and children will inevitably break you whichever you happen to be."[5] Publishers Weekly noted: "As sophisticated as she is, Jess's eight-year-old observations provide a limited lens, and at times, the novel's fantasy element veers into young adult suspense territory."[6] Kirkus Reviews stated: "Narrated from Jess's point-of-view, this ambitious psychodrama becomes repetitive in structure andcan't always sustain the adult tone. A conclusion in Nigeria attempts to knit Jess's three worlds-the actual, the spiritual and the "Bush"-but doesn't wholly rescue or resolve a story rich in material yet technically imbalanced."[7]

The novel was nomiated for an Otherwise Award in 2005.[8][9] In the UK, The Icarus Girl has sold 20,799 copies in paperback through Nielsen BookScan's UK Total Consumer Market.[10]