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Gingerbread
384 pages
A delightfully disorienting, modern fairy tale that tastes of spice, secrets, and the uncanny weight of a mother's past.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like wandering through a labyrinthine, enchanted forest that has somehow been transplanted into a modern London apartment. The narrative is delightfully meandering, refusing to hold your hand as it loops through time, memory, and a possibly imaginary homeland. It is steeped in a mood that is both whimsical and deeply uncanny, where talking plants and poisoned baked goods sit comfortably next to sharp observations about class, immigration, and schoolyard politics. The prose is dense, playful, and subversive, demanding a reader who enjoys the sensation of being slightly off-balance. It will utterly charm those who love dark, fractured fairy tales and stories about the fierce, complicated, and sometimes toxic bonds between mothers, daughters, and childhood friends.
- Mood
- dreamlike
- uncanny
- surreal
- darkly enchanting
- Tone
- wry
- whimsical
- subversive
- deadpan
- eccentric
- Pace
- meandering
- Themes
- mother-daughter bonds · weight of family legacy · immigrant displacement · dark side of fairy tales · female obsession
- The writing
- Labyrinthine, playful, and densely layered with folklore and sharp social observation.
- The arc
- A disorienting plunge into a surreal past that slowly resolves into a strange, comforting acceptance of family eccentricity.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love literary fairy tales, magical realism, and don't mind getting lost in a beautifully tangled, non-linear narrative.
Content notes
- childhood trauma
- bullying
- suicide attempt
About the book
"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 Druha strana, 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"--
Description from Open Library.
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