Gingerbread

A Novel

By: Helen Oyeyemi

Narrated by: Helen Oyeyemi

Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

"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, best-selling author of Boy, Snow, Bird, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, and Peaces returns with a bewitching and imaginative novel.

Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children's stories, beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites listeners 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 faraway (or, according to many sources, nonexistent) 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 listener.

©2019 Helen Oyeyemi (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"Both stunningly beautiful and breathtakingly original... [Oyeyemi’s] imagination, it turns out, is as boundless as her talent. Literary fiction is often knocked for being dismal and cynical, but Oyeyemi proves that it can just as easily be life-affirming, charming and just plain fun. Gingerbread is an enchanting masterpiece by an author who's refreshingly unafraid to be joyful, and it proves that Oyeyemi is one of the best English-language authors in the world today." (Michael Schaub, NPR)

"Exhilarating...Gingerbread is jarring, funny, surprising, unsettling, disorienting and rewarding.... This is a wildly imagined, head-spinning, deeply intelligent novel that requires some effort and attention from its reader. And that is just one of its many pleasures." (New York Times Book Review)

"[T]he novel's real enchantment is its experimentation with storytelling itself...this book is not only about childhood, but also what it feels like to be a child." (Time)