Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

"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, bestselling 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 readers 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 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 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 reader.

Helen Oyeyemi is the author of the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, as well as five novels, the most recent of which was a nominee for the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Boy, Snow, Bird. She won the Somerset Maugham Award in 2010 and the Hurston/Wright Heritage Award in 2012. Granta called her one of the Best Young British Novelists in 2013.