shawcrit 's review for:

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

3.0

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I'm oscillating between a 3 and a 4 on this one. This feels like a fractured fairy tale mixed with a soap opera flipped upside down that doesn't fully come together in the end. I truly love Oyeyemi's beautiful language, narrative experimentation, exploration of various themes including race, gender, family, class, emigration, but something here doesn't fully gel. The result is a book that is a bit off-kilter, but still engaging (especially if off-kilter is your thing, as it is mine). The more time I spent with it, the more I felt myself engrossed in what was happening, even if I didn't entirely understand what was going on. The more time you give to Oyeyemi, the more you get out of her writing, so I'll probably give this a re-read in the future to further untangle some of the more sticky elements.