Review
Sadly this book was not for me at all. The description sounded great and I really looked forward to reading it. However, the story jumped here and there and I struggled to make any sense of it.

The plants being grown in dolls was an interesting concept and I liked the part where her great great great grandmother saved her great great great grandfather from public execution.

As a positive, I like the author’s writing style and found that I was skipping through the book absorbed in her writing. It was the content that let it down. Also, a lovely book cover.

I rate this book 2 stars 🌟🌟

Thanks
Thank you to the author and publishers Pan Macmillan Picador for an advanced copy of this ebook in exchange for an independent review.

I requested this arc with high hopes, reading the book description, but was left feeling flat.
I am afraid that this book was not something I found easy to get into, read or follow, and the ending left a lot to be desired too.
The jumping of points of view from character to character really confused me and I don't feel any sense of completion upon finishing the book either.
Many thanks to Netgalley, Pan Macmillan and Picador for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you for my ARC but unfortunately I was unable to connect with this book and therefore won't be posting a review nearer publication.

I may be in the minority writing this as I was really looking forward to reading this and heard great things about this author but I just didn't really understand what the author was trying to get across. I did read 40% of this book but I was unable to finish.

I found that the whole prose was very disjointed and if I am honest I didn't understand what was happening. We were taken from place to place and I was unsure if I was in the real world of some fantasy place. I didn't connect with any of the characters and even if I finished the book I wouldn't feel confident in providing a fair review.

Sorry this book just wan't for me.

I was really looking forward to reading this book. It ticked so many boxes of the things I love, a modern day twist on a folkloric tale with hints of magic.
Unfortunately the book didn't live up to my expectations. There were some great touches, the living plant dolls for example, which were probably the reason I kept reading until the end, in the hope that those touches would ignite the page.
It felt like the author was trying to develop a number of themes, offering a look at the immigrant experience, Brexit like isolationism, the need of teenagers to have an identity, but none of these were fully formed, and ultimately the book was frustrating and in places, quite dull.

I will admit to feeling a little lost in places in this book. Just as I would think I had the thread and knew where we were heading, I would be drawn into another entirely different story to the one I thought I was following. Traditional linear narrative this is not. But that’s also what charmed me.

I hadn’t read anything by Oyeyemi before this and I would love to read more of her work. Her turns of phrase are gorgeous - the writing here is exquisite.

This is a book I will be recommending to friends who enjoy literary fiction and who like a touch of magic in their books. Not for everyone - perhaps more Marmite than gingerbread.

I gave this three stars despite not finishing it because the prose is absolutely magical. She writes beautifully and for a long time I was able to enjoy that without really having much of a hold on what was going on in the story. I think you have to be in the right mindset for fairytales and I needed to be reading something more grounding, so I'm sorry to say I gave up for now. I don't doubt Oyeyemi is a true talent though.

Weird and wonderful - Oyeyemi uses the outlines of Hansel and Gretel to create a story that feels mythical yet jarringly human. Gingerbread centres on a grandmother-mother-daughter trio and their ancestral gingerbread recipe, which is as seductive as ‘eating revenge’. The older two originate from Dhurustrana, an Eastern European country that may be real or may just be a mistranslation of Czech humour. The youngest Perdita is, as her name (Perdita as in the same Latin root word for perdu or lost) suggests, curious about her motherland and ingests a dangerously large amount of gingerbread in an attempt to transport herself there. Unfortunately she is also critically gluten-intolerant and ends up hospitalised. As her mother Harriet sits by her bedside, she recounts her childhood in Dhurustrana, her escape to Whitby, and Perdita’s conception. What follows is a story that is both utterly delightful and horrific. Dhurustrana is an agrarian country with landmarks like a giant Jack-in-the-Box and a massive wooden clog. It is also however, horrendously unequal with city-dwelling landlords relentlessly exploiting their serfs. Yet it also maintains Soviet values of equality, and remains impervious to racial or religious divides - the only inequality permitted is economic. Harriet is recruited by the landlady as a Gingerbread Girl, which is a cross between the valourisation of pastoral idyll in the Hitler Youth and the exploitative commodification of Hooters (but with children and gingerbread instead of sirens and chicken). She befriends the landlady’s daughter, a changeling named Gretel whose friendship continues to haunt her, and they win the lottery by spotting their ticket numbers on synchronised swimmers in a river. This book is so blasé about the bizarre that this strange land is just as convincing as what Harriet encounters when she arrives in Whitby - her benefactor’s brutalist mansion (albeit one where the rooms constantly move) where she becomes smitten with one or both of her cousins, and an illicit lust affair in an Oxford college room.

Harriet Lee’s gingerbread is not comfort food. There’s no nostalgia baked into it, no harkening back to innocent indulgences and nursery times. It is not humble, nor is it dusty in its crumb.

This book begins with an translated epigraph from Sir Gaiwan and the Green Knight – “The beginning and the end accord hardly ever”, a paragraph which applies less to the book as a whole (the end of the novel does end up roughly according with the start) than to individual sections and sometimes paragraphs.

Oyeyemi is a master of what I can only call digressive description, never one to see a tangent and not want to go off on it, often building a fascinating side story (for example early on, one of the characters ancestors indulging not so much in gallows humour as gallows speed dating) only to sate her imaginative appetite and return to the main narrative (if that can be even said to exist).

Much of Oyeymi’s previous work has I understand has taken fairy tales as a launch pad for her imagination. In this case the starting point for her narrative excursion is more around Gingerbread itself than Hansel and Gretel (or the Gingerbread Man) per se

I was reminded a little of the story of Hansel and Gretel’s second trip to the Gingerbread cottage: at times I would feel that I was starting to follow the trali of the narrative only to retrace my steps and see that those crumbs had been snatched away.

However let me attempt my own trail of crumbs (unfortunately a number were eaten)

• A gift for Gingerbread and a personal brand built around it
• Gingerbread born of afflicted times and made with blighted rye for additional ergot induced frisson
• A coeliac who craves Gingerbread and a mother who craves supplying it
• Talking dolls with body parts replaced by living plants, for example Bonnie bonsai tree for arms – dolls which am to keep the narrative away from its wider flights of fancy, despite their own fantastical existence
• A Parent Power Association which reaches back and forwards across generations
• Druhastrana (per Wikipedia) Harriet’s birthplace “an alleged nation state of indeterminable geographic location” which nobody knows how to get to.
• An apparent suicide attempt revealed as an attempt to reach a family home
• Twin wheat-sheaf rings
• The sprawling Kercherval family tree
• A conservative, bureaucratic, feudal scattered with landmarks - a giant clog, a demented hack in the box, a broken loom (all with their own stories)
• Gretels well “there was no tale anybody knew of concerning this well” – but whose tale ends up as the tale of this novel
• Childhood an growing up, wealth creation, life as a series of mutual exchanges
• A changeling who disputes the bad press her kind have received
• Rigged and non-rigged by bizarre lotteries
• Gingerbread girls: cut off from families, fattened up to look like image of healthy country girls, borderline abused by adults all apparently to sell gingerbread
• Houses with attitudes, interior designers as illusionists
• Minimum FrankenWage
• Three future meeting places later seen as definitely-not-haunted houses in Miss Maszkeradi’s masquerade

Helen Oyeymi’s “Gingerbread” is not conventional fare. There’s no narrative baked into it, no harkening back to identikit incidents or novel themes. It is not humble nor is it derivative in its characters.

This book seemed like it would be a whimsical fairytale but unfortunately, it did not hit the mark for me. Beautifully written, I found the story difficult to get into. Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC egalley.

My first book of 2020 was the delightful Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi. I hadn’t read any other books by the author but the mere title made me want to read this book, long before I even read the blurb. I love all things gingerbread so this sounded like the perfect book for me. Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children’s stories – equal parts wholesome and uncanny; from the tantalizing witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel to the man-shaped confection who one day decides to run as fast as he can – Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe.

A fairytale inspired literary novel by feminist stalwart Helen Oyeyemi sounded like my perfect cup of tea.

The book promised a bewitching and uncanny tale about Perdita Lee and her mother Harriet, through the intoxicating Gingerbread they bake and a far away magical land, that may or may not exist, Druhástrana. The tale certainly has the ethereal and intangible quality of fairytales, yet that is where the influence seems to end. With little to no plot, the book heavily focuses on character development and relationships between mothers and daughters.

This is not a direct retelling so much as a new exploration infused with the magic of fairytales. Gingerbread permeates every corner of the novel. It is simultaneously stands to ingratiate the three generations of Lee women, and set them apart from modern society.

Oyeyemi leads us, like Hansel and Gretel, with a trail of literary breadcrumbs as we trace not only Perdita's birth, but her family origins, her mother's and grandmother's stories. The story masterfully blends the highly literary with contemporary political and pop culture references; Stormzy with Shakespeare, with a dash of Brexit in there too. As well as wonderfully lyrical prose, Oyeyemi offers up a sharp wit and satire of modern culture, and it's lack of imagination or magic.

Yet the winding trail sometimes leaves us lost deep in the woods, with little indication of where the story is going, or what indeed the point of it all is. The cast of characters is often confusing and easily conflated, and ultimately despite the strong focus on characterisation and exploration of relationships, we fail to really connect or feel invested in anyone.

This was a really exciting and promising endeavor, which pushes the boundaries of genre and modern fiction. However, while elements were wonderful, it failed to really come together as a whole work.

I really struggled with this book - the story was very difficult to follow, and I did not feel engaged with it in any way. I stubbornly managed to finish the book - but did not enjoy it.

The original hardback cover for this book was one of the most beautiful I've ever seen (a wishing well in a wood) but it implied the story was a re-telling of a fairy tale - which it isn't - and that's why the reviews are mixed. Gingerbread is one of those novels where the author leaves you wondering if this a tale of magic, or a modern fable (referencing Brexit, people trafficking and immigration), or entirely in the heroine's mind. Even after finishing it, I'm still not certain!

Gingerbread is a story within a story. Harriet Lee lives at the top of a London tower block (the tallest tower of fairy tales) with her teenage daughter Perdita. Harriet is hard-working, practical and kind. She tries very hard to be accepted by the Parents' Association at Perdita's school, even baking them her 'famous' gingerbread. But all her attempts - and her gingerbread - are rejected. Then Perdita is rushed to hospital. While Harriet waits for her daughter to recover, Perdita insists that Harriet tells her the true story of where they came from and who her father is - because Harriet's homeland, Druhástrana, does not appear on any map...

The best part of Gingerbread is the very clever writing. Other books may contain ten brilliant lines in all; in Gingerbread there are ten brilliant lines on almost every page. The story is a very slow burn. Every character, even the minor ones, have lengthy backstories and the story meanders about, but there is humour and a tiny bit of romance, and some parts are truly magical. I loved the description of Harriet's flat and Perdita's dolls. Another favourite bit was where Harriet went to live with the Kerchevals and met Perdita's father. I wasn't so keen on the gingerbread theme park!

You have to be the kind of reader who enjoys long books with lots of detail, a clever turn of phrase, and the ability to enjoy a good story without thinking about the logic of it too much. You can think about that after you've finished it! The only book I can think of that's vaguely similar is Life of Pi - a fantastical story-within-a-story of one person's life. If you're looking for a retelling of Hansel and Gretel, you will be disappointed - even though there actually is a character called Gretel!



Thank you to Helen Oyeyemi and Picador (Pan Macmillan) for my copy of this book, which I requested via NetGalley and reviewed voluntarily.

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi is the story of Perdita and her mother Harriet Lee. It is a dark fairytale with pertinent resonance for real life. They live in a gold-plated seventh floor flat where Harriet makes gingerbread from a secret very special recipe handed down through her family. It came with Harriet from a non existent land called Druhastrana. The novel follows the pair in their search for along- lost friend . It is full of human emotions such as jealousy, ambition, greed, loss, estrangement and other issues that exist in day to day life in the real world outside the realms of fairytale.
This book is imaginative. It is beautifully written. I just found it obscure and whilst I wanted desperately to like it , I found it tedious at times and incredibly demanding. Most of the time I did struggle to continue. However at other points it is indeed bewitching and magical. It's otherworldly full of plot twists that can obscure its sense of direction. I do wish it every success. I wish I had listened rather than read it on a kindle. It may have been a better experience.

Helen Oyeyemi weaves a fantastic, mysterious tale with Gingerbread. Her blend of magical realism, folklore and family history make for reading rife with symbolism and meaning. There are many layers to unpack in this work and it can be abstract, so take your time and savour it.

I didn't finish this book because I simply wasn't enjoying it. I got to 60% before deciding that it wasn't for me. The trouble is I wasn't invested in Hariett or Peridita's story and the journey of how they came to be. The story about the gingerbread the magic surrounding it just wasn't for me. Tried my hand at magic realism but it's not for me. Many thanks for the ARC.

I received an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The blurb really does not achieve anything like a realistic description of this book. The cover seems strange for a book that involves gingerbread and carrier pigeons but depicts a crow.

When I started the book i felt fairly interested in it the narrative was unusual in the way it drew out its characters and their actions but I was enjoying it. However as the book goes on it becomes simply a series of poorly connected events (at least I couldn't work anything out). In the final pages a line of the narrative perfectly describes how i felt about the book - "why insist on pinpointing who was who and what is what and when was when" It is simply not possible but strangely I would have liked to understand what the author was getting at. Because of these things I found the whole quite dull and I cannot imagine wanting to read anything else by this author

Oh, what a struggle to rate and review Gingerbread! I finished it ages ago and have been pondering the appropriate messages to convey about this mysteriously gorgeous, delicious yet perplexing novel.

I have chosen to go with my gut of 4 stars as the writing quality is completely bewitching and transfixing. Yes, the story does take the less traveled path down bazaar-o street but it is so beguiling as to seem normal. I enjoyed the fairy tale elements interwoven throughout the story though at times I was more confused than I am happy to admit. I don't dare touch on the plot for fear of dropping some crucial tidbit but let's suffice it to say that this is the story of relationships; between mother and daughter, extended family members and those we hold dear for unclear reasons.

It brings to mind the novels of Gregory Maguire in it's casual deployment of magical elements to great effect. Such great fun. Gingerbread is brilliantly beautiful, creative storytelling but may be a titch tricky to track once the story gets underway. Is that a deterrent? No, not at all. I really enjoyed this otherworldly gem and hope you do, too.

Elegantly written, this book somehow failed to really get a grip on me. It felt disjointed narratively and while I appreciated the idea of it creatively, reading this became a drag when I couldn't quite enter the world.

I could not engage with this book and so I did not finish it.

Thanks for letting me review this book