Gingerbread
A Novel
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3.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"Exhilarating. . . . A wildly imagined, head-spinning, deeply intelligent novel." —The New York Times Book Review
"Wildly 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 children's stories, the beloved bestselling author of Boy, Snow, Bird and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours invites readers into a delightfully inventive and bewitching novel about a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe.
Perdita Lee may appear 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 Gretela—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 teenage Perdita's search for her mother's long-lost friend 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, Gingerbread is a true feast for the reader.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
With her delightfully original novel about a mother-daughter duo who cook up magic, Helen Oyeyemi flips the fairy-tale script. As a child, Perdita Lee was crazy for her mother Harriet’s gingerbread, baked according to a recipe brought from her far-off and possibly imaginary homeland, Druhástrana. As Perdita matures, she dives into her mom’s past, uncovering the enchantment that defined Harriet’s early life—and still affects her years later. Blending the exquisite lightness of magic realism with heavyweight issues like class inequality and immigration politics, Gingerbread is bewitching and deep.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Oyeyemi's idiosyncratically brilliant latest (following Boy, Snow, Bird), she spins a tale about three generations of women and the gingerbread recipe that is their curse and their legacy. In an effort to understand her heritage, precocious British schoolgirl Perdita Lee recreates her family's famed gingerbread recipe but with additional ingredients that have near-fatal consequences. When she slips into a coma, her mother, Harriet, is forced to tell her the truth of their family. To do so, she must recount her upbringing in the mysterious country Druh strana and the arduous journey that finally brought her and her mother, Margot, out of it. Harriet's account is an astonishing tale of rigged lotteries, girls in wells, and the mystifying and meddling Gretel Kercheval, a childhood friend of Harriet's who seems to have an awful lot to do with Harriet's fate. Though Harriet and Margot do eventually manage to leave Druh strana, they realize that it's not quite as easy to master the outside world, especially not when there are more Kerchevals around to complicate things. Oyeyemi excels at making the truly astounding believable and turning even the most familiar tales into something strange and new. This fantastic and fantastical romp is a wonderful addition to her formidable canon.
