The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi- 3/5 stars

Eight-year-old Jess is uninhibitedly creative. She loves reading and listening to her mother narrate Shakespeare. She has an English father and a Nigerian mother, so, culturally, she feels like she belongs neither here nor there. When the family takes a trip to their hometown in Nigeria and she has to interact with her other family members – her aunts and uncles and their children – in Igbo (which is one of the largest groups of Africa; Igbo is also the language that the Igbo people speak), she feels a clash of cultures and a sense of discordance within.

The main story revolves around Jess meeting another child called Titiola while in Nigeria. There's something unnerving about this girl. A friendship soon develops, and Jess seeks her company whenever she feels lonely. How far does this friendship between Jess and Titiola stretch and who exactly is this Titiola? Is there something more insidious at play?

The Nigerian author has melded magical realism, fantasy and horror in this book. There's a heady mix of unnerving suspense and mystery as well, but it did not strike the right note for me. I felt that the disparate parts did not unify nicely. On the positive side, the dialogues between Jess and Titiola, including those between Jess and two of her other friends who come over to her house to play sometimes, have been done nicely; you feel like you are listening to actual conversations between children, which are marked by playful banter, leg-pulling, one-upmanship and gleeful abandon.