“Exhilarating…A wildly imagined, head-spinning, deeply intelligent novel.” – The New York Times Book Review
“[W]ildly inventive…[Helen Oyeyemi’s] prose is not without its playful bite.” –Vogue The prize-winning, bestselling author of Boy, Snow, Bird and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours returns with a bewitching and imaginative novel.Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic … imaginative novel.
Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children’s stories, beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe.
Perdita Lee may appear to be your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor walk-up apartment with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there’s the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it’s very popular in Druhástrana, the far-away (or, according to many sources, non-existent) land of Harriet Lee’s early youth. The world’s truest lover of the Lee family gingerbread, however, is Harriet’s charismatic childhood friend Gretel Kercheval —a figure who seems to have had a hand in everything (good or bad) that has happened to Harriet since they met.
Decades later, when teenaged Perdita sets out to find her mother’s long-lost friend, it prompts a new telling of Harriet’s story. As the book follows the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work, wealth, and real estate, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that reliably holds a constant value. Endlessly surprising and satisfying, written with Helen Oyeyemi’s inimitable style and imagination, it is a true feast for the reader.
more
One of the things I love most about Oyeyemi’s writing is how her novels twist the bounds of reality without ever undermining her reader’s trust or their belief in what’s happening. Like living inside a dream or a carnival ride, nothing ever seems too improbable: not the talking dolls with plants for heads, not Gretel with two pupils in each eye, not the house whose rooms reshuffle themselves like a deck of cards. Even the book’s genre refuses to remain stable — one minute it’s a dead ringer for Roald Dahl’s brand of dark fairy tale, the next it’s running headlong toward Garcia Márquez, and it even floats into Shirley Jackson territory at one point. Warning: this book is delicious and you will devour it (also you’ll want to bake a big batch of gingerbread once you’re done).
A fanastic book, in every sense of the word. Helen Oyeyemi has created a magical world that we long to inhabit, set amid the strictures and heartbreaks of contemporary life. Gingerbread is a lucid dream of a book, and I was sorry it ended. I just may read it again, right now.
This book is definitely not for everyone, but it is for me.
This has both the brilliant whimsical nature and the shadowy underside of a fairy tale without the contrived romance plots that have become so common in other fairy tale retellings on shelves today. It’s just as equally about a mysterious land and the journey as it is about family interconnectedness and the individual stories of the characters themselves. It’s confusing at times, requires several readthroughs of certain pages to get the full picture, and the story sometimes seems meandering and plotless at times, which I can imagine would be frustrating to certain readers, but it all pays off in the end.
Helen Oyeyemi’s prose and world building in this book was enchanting. I loved the idea of a mystery Hansel and Gretel world that could be obtained through gingerbread. I enjoyed reading a realistic mother-daughter relationship. My struggle was keeping track of the timeline in the story. It is possible that it was due to listening and not reading but I found myself going back and forth to understand the timeline. There were some great messages throughout this story as well!
Just too non linear for me
i quit after25 pages. Too strange for me.
Have you ever munched on a gingerbread man, your teeth sinking into the soft belly, while swinging at the area play park during a thunderstorm at twilight, your Mum on the porch swathed in a bright orange sari calling you, but not quite using your name?
For me, reading Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi feels a bit like that. Confused at times, poignant at others, but always, with that nostalgia of a dark fairy tale.
The book incorporates magical realism, dreamlike imagery, and nursery stories to present a stream of consciousness exploration of character, family, and class. Talking dollies offer wisdom. A changeling pops in and out. Familiar names thread through the strangely-structured novel. What unites the many and varied elements in the lyrical and often confusing novel? It is gingerbread, created with love from an inherited recipe, gingerbread, a nearly magical concoction used as currency.
I think this has a lot of potential but on first read it wasn’t a favorite. Truthfully, I read this while visiting my sick grandmother, so I think my mind was wandering quite a bit as I read this. That being said this is NOT the book to read when you are not fully engaged. The fantasy/whimsical nature requires the reader’s full attention. Every sentence offers critical information, so I had to reread a lot of things that I missed to piece things together. I like the overall plot, but as someone who does read read a ton of fantasy and had a lot on their mind, it was a little difficult to suspend disbelief to understand what was happening. I plan to reread this at some point in the future (or listen to it?) to try and give it another chance.
I loved the interconnectivity of the characters and their lives. She very deftly marries fairytale with reality. Fat