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ceallaighsbooks 's review for:

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi
5.0
adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
“Harriet Lee’s gingerbread is not comfort food. There’s no nostalgia baked into it, no hearkening back to innocent indulgences and jolly times at nursery. It is not humble, nor is it dusty in the crumb. … A gingerbread addict once told Harriet that eating her gingerbread is like eating revenge. ‘It’s like noshing on the actual and anatomical heart of somebody who scarred your beloved and thought they’d got away with it,’ the gingerbread addict said. ‘That heart, ground to ash and shot through with darts of heat, salt, spice, and sulfurous syrup, as if honey was measured out, set ablaze, and trickled through the dough along with the liquefied spoon. You are phenomenal. You’ve ruined my life forever. Thank you.’
     ‘Thank you,’ said Harriet.” 
 
title: Gingerbread 
author: Helen Oyeyemi 
published: 2019 
publisher: Riverhead Books (Penguin RH) 
 
genre: literary fiction 
setting: contemporary europe & britain, & Druhástrana (Bohemia-adjacent) 
main themes/subjects: girlhood, class consciousness, lottery & luck—for good or ill—inescapable & inevitable, a lack of control over / choice in one’s life—especially when young, the intersection between fairy-tales & family mythologies, changelings & forever-childs (maybe as cursed?), immigration & displacement, found family, architecture & antiques: visually home, interrupted childhood, femme family relationships & friendships, overcoming trauma—or at least moving past/beyond, nationality & identity, connection across borders (physical, temporal, emotional, & imaginary &c.), closure, &—ofc—gingerbread 
representation: queer characters & relationships, Black main characters cast, immigrants, ND-coded MCs 
tropes: gingerbread houses, old wells, changelings, & other vaguely fairy-tale seeming imagery & themes, step/adopted [made to feel lesser? in a way] family members 
CW // suicide attempt, attempted coercion to have an abortion 
 
“‘More than friends, eh? More than friends . . . You know, my mother once told me that half of the hatred that springs up between people is rooted in this mistaken belief that there’s any human relationship more sacred than friendship.’” 
 
blurbs: “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.” — 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 
 
“Is there an author working today who is comparable to Helen Oyeyemi? She might be the only contemporary author for whom it’s not hyperbole to claim she’s sui generis, and I don’t think it’s a stretch either to say she’s a genius, as opposed to talented or newsworthy or relevant or accomplished, each of her novels daring more in storytelling than the one before . . . A tale that bears multiple rereadings and is more marvelous the deeper you’re willing to dive into its rearranging of reality, its derangement.” — Los Angeles Review of Books 
 
“A beautifully, wildly inventive beast. Nobody else writes like this: puncturing the timelessly poetic with harshly contemporary asides, animating plants and dolls with a cool nonchalance. And how is it that this dark, nutty novel exudes cozy warmth above all else?” — Entertainment Weekly 
 
A bit excessive, perhaps, sharing all of these blurbs, but it’s nice for once to see that I’m not the only one who loves, deeply appreciates, & acknowledges the genius in Oyeyemi’s works. 
 
“Margot had only one question left. In Druhástranian, she asked: ‘Drahomíra, my dear . . . are you by any chance Druhástranian?’
     She was answered in English, and Harriet held her phone away from her ear to protect it from the Maszkeradi trill: ‘Of course I am . . . I mean, aren’t we all?’” 
 
my thoughts: 
This was my first re-read of the first Helen Oyeyemi novel I ever read (originally in 2019). And, as is the case with any of her works that I re-read, this time around I felt as though half (at least) of what I was reading was entirely new. Her work reminds me of the fairy-book in Ella Enchanted that, every time you open it, there are new stories to be found inside. 
 
I see why upon reading this book five years ago I made it my mission to read every other thing Oyeyemi wrote & would ever write, a task I finally accomplished this year with her latest novel (generously gifted to me by Riverhead Books) Parasol Against the Axe (a novel that returns to the Bohemian lands & peoples in the form of many different kinds of Pragues). 
 
In Gingerbread, the action of the story begins in Druhástrana—a Bohemian country, sometimes on the Czech border, sometimes within its borders, sometimes on the coast, sometimes an island just off the coast—& mostly consisting of farmland & with strong rural sociocultural identity, that most folks have come to think of as either not in existence any more, or a place that was only ever imagined, & about which there is no common consensus other than vague understandings & unclear memories (sometimes even pathologized in order to make the ambiguity more palatable to folks uncomfortable with such things). 
 
“Read into that whatever you will,” Oyeyemi seems to say as she takes your hand, like Peter leading Wendy, onwards from one fictional fancy to another, maneuvering brilliant characters, via her idiosyncratic & stunning language, through relatable situations interweaving modern realities with childhood nostalgia, the heartbreak of familial, friendly, & romantic love with immigration & displacement among deeply multicultural communities, as well as dreams of & hope for a perfect, just out-of-reach future, or, at least, for some closure. 
 
“‘…Hang on, who started the “Are-you-OK” chain?’
     ‘No need to stress yourself out, Mum . . . it was Tamar.’
     ‘Me? I hadn’t said anything yet. Only joking . . . it was me, it was me. And I’m fine too. Goodnight.’
     ‘Goodnight!’
     ‘Night.’
     ‘G’night.
     ‘Goodnight . . .’
     And Perdita Lee, who had been counting the “goodnights,” smiled in the darkness.” 
 
i would recommend this book to readers who are willing to open their minds up to something totally original & appreciate a story on entirely its own terms. this book is best read starting in your early to mid 20’s-ish, & then again & again, every few years or so, forever. 
 
final note: &, as is also always the case with every Oyeyemi book I read, this is now my number one favorite again. Mr Fox (the second book of hers I ever read) is up for a re-read next so that I can write a review for it & then I will have published reviews for all of her books. <3 
 
final final note: oh, & please don’t go looking on goodreads for reviews of her books—folks there haven’t managed to normalize saying “I didn’t get it” & moving on rather than feeling the need to write paragraphs & paragraphs elaborating in embarrassing detail just how small their imaginations are, & how lacking is their sense of humility & willingness to open themselves up to something truly unique & literally wonderful. 💅🏻 
 
“Gretel’s musings over consecutive platefuls of gingerbread: Is there anything that this foodstuff lacks . . . is there any other food that so completely nourishes body and soul, any food more absolute in its embrace of the life-force of its eater . . . ?
     Harriet ate a piece of gingerbread and tingled all over. It was a square meal and a good night’s sleep and a long, blood-spattered howl at the moon rolled into one.” 
 
spice level: 🌶️🌶️ 
season: winter holiday 
music pairing: Czech Christmas music 
 
further reading: 

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