Thank you to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for giving me this digital copy in exchange for a fair review!

On first opening Gingerbread, my overwhelming thought was that magical realism is something I struggle with. And by the end I still stand by that.

However, it seems to be only when I find a description or scene particularly difficult to imagine. Which unfortunately, happened quite a few times through this story. Some of the magical descriptions that stood out to me, thanks to their casual appearance, were strange plant creatures and dolls that talk. These creatures felt blurred around the edges, which fits perfectly with the genre.

Throughout there was a meandering through time periods with no obvious pattern, which was something I also found hard to follow and involved a lot of re-reading to make sure I knew where and when I was. But this settled down once we entered storytelling mode and Harriet gets lost in her retelling of her past, predominately staying within one time period.

The recounting itself was largely interesting, again with a few bizarre twists, but there were two themes that became increasingly clear and became my favourite parts of reading this book. One was the story friendship that extended through time and space, the second was the complex nature of families. All nicely wrapped up in a gingerbread metaphor.

All in all, this story felt chaotic. But not 100% in a bad way. I am glad I stuck with it, I found the story and journey of Harriet, Gretel, her daughter, alongside the collective story of the Lees and Kerchevals interesting. But in the end, it was the golden friendship of Harriet and Gretel that swept me away.

It was a wonderful exploration into family ties, tradition and friendships that span time and distance. Even if it was all very surreal.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy.

I took three runs at this book before I was able to finish it. I kept trying to read it but it just wasn't gelling with me at all. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood for something so fantastical and nebulous but I just wasn't able to grasp it at all.

There's absolutely nothing bad about it, I just couldn't connect with it in any meaningful way and it just wasn't for me.

Hard to get into it, specially as it was hard to follow, but when I did I appreciated the cleverness and magic of it. Not for everyone.

I haven't read anything by Helen Oyeyemi before so I can't say that I am accustomed to her style and so it might be that which led me to not enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. The overall storyline I thought was engaging, somewhat weird but I'm down for weird - especially in a reframing of a fairytale. However I just felt the writing was somewhat convoluted and it made a complicated but interesting storyline hard to follow.

There are so many ways to describe Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi but for my own sanity I think I'll stick to saying that it was odd, very confusing, yet still managing to be delightful.

I loved that the author was able to produce a fairy tale and contemporary story all woven into one. It explores the past of Harriet Lee, and the effect her decisions have on her family and friends, as well as looking at how this has impacted on her view of the world. This book is rife with magical realism, as Harriet struggles with friendship, and fathoming the bonds which are real or insincere. Spanning three generations, Helen Oyeyemi's writing is magical and lovely, but many events had me puzzled as well as being uncertain of their significance.

Unquestionably imaginative and original, Gingerbread is a family drama with main themes of class and friendship. Also playing a huge part in the storyline was an inheritance of a long held traditional family recipe for Gingerbread, which was instrumental in the shaping of the family's destiny and fortunes. The icing on the cake was the inclusion of talking dolls, and the Gothic and folklore touches.

There were occasions where timelines became blurred and I struggled to distinguish between past and present. Many small interjections in the meandering narrative made it a bit hard to follow. However, I appreciated the characters in this story, and the way they all fitted together. I know that I didn't understand all of the meanings and relevances in Gingerbread but I found to be (at least partly) a gratifying, if strange reading experience.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel, at my request, from Pan Macmillan via NetGalley and this review is my unbiased opinion.

Gingerbread. The very word conjures up images of gingerbread men or gingerbread houses, forever linked to the magical themes of Christmas and fairy tales. Add to that characters named Harriet and Gretel and the idea forms that this novel isn't a plain one.

There is a lovely opening to this book about the types of gingerbread and how precious the family recipe is. A mother and daughter try to fit in with the people at school and attempt to win friends by gifting gingerbread regularly. It doesn't work as much as they hope in the the London school although it is popular in their home country. And this is where we start to notice things are a little odd.

It is questionable if the home country actually exists. Their London home is up seven flights of stairs and has some dubious decor and strangely animated dolls. But this isn't quite the delightful fairy tale the initial impression may indicate, with depictions of family fights, jealousy, vomiting and the enduring theme of houses.

The book is imaginative and meandering, so much so that sometimes it is hard to make sense of it. It is modern and witty but also aimless. The prose is good, the plot not so much. Gingerbread is what holds it all together: the family, as well as the novel itself. The only thing that has any value is the gingerbread, the thread from the beginning to the delicious end. This is a contemporary retelling of those gingerbread folk tales from our childhood. Worth reading.

Gingerbread is a surreal, dreamlike examination of fairytale symbolism – not just the titular biscuits, but also wells, the power of three, farmworkers setting off to the big city to seek their fortune – all layered together so as to be almost impenetrable to reader understanding.

Each time I started to feel like I had a grip on the plot or characters, they slid away from me and turned out to be something else again than I had thought. This does not mean that the plot and characters were not good… just that this writing was, perhaps, far beyond my powers of literary comprehension.

I do love magical realism, but this felt more like magical surrealism in many places!

I may not have been able to really work out any of the character’s relationships to each other (so many Kerchevals!), but I did find them strangely compelling, and the story that lurked beneath the talking dolls, addictive gingerbread, and magically disappearing Gretel was an interesting one of family ties and what holds them together (or rips them apart). This thread of family – woven in a complex tangle between the Leighs and the Kerchevals – was what kept me persevering with the story to the end, despite the dream illogic and stop-start pacing.

I do think there is sweetness and sense to be found in this book, but am afraid I got lost in the woods searching for it, with only Kercheval-flavoured crumbs to lead me back!





Harriet’s lights flicker and she hears feet on the long flight of stairs between the sixth and the seventh floors. Skip, step, hop skip, step, hop, and quick exhalations, hfff hfff hfff. But otherwise a dauntless ascent. Long, long strides.
Harriet listens with nothing in her mind but ?!?!
Skip, step, hop, Gretel. Skip, step, hop, Gretel. Skip, step, hope and hope and hope—
This is part and parcel of living at the top of seven steep staircases. Princess in a tower syndrome sets in. You expect momentous visitors, since those are the only kind who would take the time and trouble to seek you out. Visitations from fate, or from one you long to behold. But Harriet might do well to bar the door. If the climb from first to seventh floors isn’t a big deal for Gretel Kercheval, that could be because the longest climb was the one that brought her to the first floor.

– Helen Oyeyemi, Gingerbread

Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

<blockquote>‘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 sulphurous 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 for ever. Thank you.’
‘Thank <u>you</u>,’ said Harriet. [loc. 23]</blockquote>

Harriet Lee makes gingerbread. Some like it, others reject it. The recipe's an old Druhástranian one, handed down from mother to daughter: the original was a way of using blighted rye. ('gingerbread made the difference between choking risk down and swallowing it gladly'.)

But wait: Druhástrania? 'an alleged nation state of indeterminable geographic location', says this universe's Wikipedia. An island nation somewhere in Eastern Europe, blighted by bureaucracy and marooned by a referendum. Harriet and her mother Margot come from Druhástrania: Harriet's daughter Perdita tries to visit Druhástrania via an uncommon and dangerous route. Recovering but mute, she demands -- with the help of her four talking dolls -- the story of how Harriet came to England. This story will range from the surreal (landmarks such as a giant clog and a wandering jack-in-the-box) to the sordid (the Gingerbread Girls with their wholesome smiles and the soirees at which they play musical chairs with elderly patrons), and introducing a cast of strong-willed characters, including the Kercheval family -- to whom the Lees owe a great deal, and possibly vice versa -- and Harriet's childhood friend Gretel, the girl in the well.

The prose is exuberant, the invention wild, the women -- nearly all the characters are women -- fascinatingly flawed and prone to thinking of their lives in terms of story. <i>Gingerbread</i> doesn't adhere too closely to the story of Hansel and Gretel: it uses that fairytale as a springboard for a story about repression, identity, trying to fit in and trying to find home.

I didn't find it a wholly satisfactory read. The story itself seemed to fizzle out near the end: perhaps I was not reading closely enough, or perhaps my expectations were in a different key. I loved the luscious and sensual prose, I appreciated the (sometimes dark) humour, but I had no real sense of an ending.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free review copy, in exchange for this honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and The Publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sorry not my cup of tea. Rambling and unfocused. Not for me.

A book with a difference- it’s an ok read.
Thank you to both NetGalley and publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book

Thank you to netgalley.co.uk for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

To be honest, I'm really not sure about this book, I really wanted to liked as soon as I started it as the writing was brilliantly done. As I got further into the novel, I began feeling more and more confused about what was going on. There appeared to be too much going on in the novel with shifting timelines and so many characters.
This hasn't put me off Oyeyemi's writing however, I would still love to give her another shot.

Readers who truly enjoy magical realism and retellings will likely love Oyeyemi's "Gingerbread"; however it felt pretty aimless and uneventful to me.

I was sent a copy of Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi to read and review by NetGalley.
The first part of this novel pulled me in and had me intrigued, with lovely prose and magical tones. However, by the time I got further into the book I became rather disheartened, rather confused and I have to say rather nonplussed. I found that I didn’t really care about these people or what happened or had happened to them. The last section in the book began to engage me again and I was pleased that it did, it almost made the reading of the whole worthwhile!

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Pan Macmillan in exchange for an honest review.

*DNF at 25%*

I did take a bit of a gamble with this book because I knew it was magical realism but the premise just sounded so interesting. Sadly I could not get into it. The first few chapters/pages were alright but then things took an abstract turn and I couldn't follow what was going on anymore which was such a shame. The writing was very good and if you like literary or magical realism, then I'm sure you will enjoy this far more than I did. Sadly this just wasn't for me.

You know when you're trying to remember a dream and you're pretty sure there were perfectly sensible transitions at the time, but you just can't remember them now?
Or when you're on a call and you only get 13 out of 15 words? It is enough to keep up, but not enough to avoid confusion.
That is what this was for me - try as I might, I just couldn't get in front of it. I was and remain confused by the brightly colored, yet vaguely sinister, puzzle this presented me.

So, yeah, I struggled with this one, but it definitely isn't enough to keep me from really admiring it.

I mean, I'm pretty sure that is the point - like the wheat fields of Harriet's childhood in possibly-fictional Druhástrana - I think the reader is supposed to be untethered here. Awash in a fairytale, complete with gingerbread houses on chicken legs and pseudo-Victorian-Willy-Wonkan-child-labor-burlesque-theme-parks... I mean, we can't possibly be expected to fully unpack that. Can we?

And that immersion and confusion allows us to relate to Harriet and Perdita, an immigrant mother/daughter duo trying to make their way in the UK today (PTA and cyber bullying and rent vs. mortgage, oh yeah, and grandmothers on Tinder) while also reconciling with Harriet's mysterious past and her probably not imaginary changeling fairy god-friend (definitely not a mother).

From "Harriet Lee's gingerbread is not comfort food. There's no nostalgia baked into it, no harkening back to innocent indulgences and jolly times at nursery. It is not humble, nor is it dusty in the crumb." to "It was a square meal and a good night’s sleep and a long, blood-splattered howl at the moon rolled into one." The gingerbread - the food and the literary device - is such an effective means of communicating so much about the relationships in the book. Dozens of times, character is revealed with a single bite. It is so well done.
This baked good manage to embody so much about the women making it as well - an edible representation of the Lee women's state of mind, and fortitude, and aspirations.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the arc to review.

My thanks to Pan Macmillan Picador for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Gingerbread’ by Helen Oyeyemi in exchange for an honest review. This was originally published in May 2019 with its paperback edition released on 5 March 2020.

Harriet Lee and her daughter Perdita live in London. Harriet loves baking gingerbread, based on a secret family recipe. Perdita longs to know more about her mother’s childhood in Druhàstrana, a country that is so isolated that it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page (and may be fictional).

When Perdita is recovering in hospital from an allergic reaction to gingerbread, Harriet finally tells her life story including her time in a gingerbread theme park, where its young workers are exploited. She also tells of her friend, Gretel Kercheval, who she first met emerging from a well and who is a changeling with an insatiable appetite for gingerbread. Years later Perdita goes in search of Gretel.

This is without doubt a strange and surreal novel that is very much in keeping with Helen Oyeyemi’s unique style.

Despite its title, the presence of characters named Hansel and Gretel, and even a Gingerbread House, this isn’t strictly a retelling of the fairytale. Her writing cleverly blends magical realism, reflections on family, and references to social issues, such as immigration, class, human trafficking, and even Brexit.

I have adored Helen Oyeyemi’s writing since reading her debut, ‘Icarus Girl’, and so was prepared for the unusual, dreamlike structure of ‘Gingerbread’ and just allowed myself to become immersed in her exquisite prose.

Certainly an unusual novel though it appealed to me.

OK well I really don’t know where to start with this book. Even though I have finished this book I feel non the wiser as to what I have read. I feel as though this book doesn’t flow and that it jumps all over the place. When I did think I was starting to understand this book the story change. So I felt as though I was just in a world of confusion.

It was well written in some parts. The part that I enjoyed the most as well as the most interesting part was all about the Gingerbread Girls. How they were taken from their farms and taken to the city. Where they had to behave like young girls and give the impression of being sweet and innocent. When the girls got to a certain age they were sent home or they ended caring and looking after the younger Gingerbread Girls.


This book is about a girl called Perdita and her mother Harriet. Harriet comes from a fictional country, that most people aren’t even aware of as it’s a closely guarded secret. Harriet also has a special recipe for gingerbread which has been passed down by the women of her husbands family.

One day Harriet comes home to find that her daughter has made herself some gingerbread but it has in an extra ingredient. So her mother called the emergency services as she was unresponsive.

Perdita was in a coma for a few days and she said that she travelled to the fictional country Druhastrana, where I think she comes in to contact with Gretel. When she comes out of her coma she has a wooden ring with her that he mother knows is proof that she went there.

While Perdita recovers at home her mother Harriet tells he about her life in Druhastrana, about the farm she lived on, her friends and meeting a girl called Gretel who pretended to be the daughter of the woman in charge of the Gingerbread Girls.

Perdita also has some sort of magical dolls made out of strange things and they can all talk together.

The book is full of magic and this other country that seems to be full of magic, but I didn’t enjoy it as I’ve already said I kept getting lost. When I did think I was starting to understand it I got lost again. This book may be enjoyable for some but it certainly wasn’t for me. So I can only give it 2 stars.

This was such a whimsical and dreamlike modern-day fairy tale. It tells the story of Harriet, her mother, Margot and her daughter, Perdita. Through trials and tribulations, the one thing that always holds true is their gingerbread.

The Positives: I loved the way the narrative flowed. Helen Oyeyemi writes such beautiful prose and the plot jumped from one surreal event to next with glorious aplomb. The narrative has a slightly episodic feel, which works really well because it reads like a linked series of fairy tales. I loved the women in this book, all of whom were strong and independent, completely authentic and believable. The sensuality of the gingerbread comes through really strongly too.

The Negatives: Occasionally, it was a little difficult to keep some of the characters straight, particularly towards the end when some of them were referred to by more than one name!

Overall, I thought this was a wonderful book and will definitely be checking out some of Helen's previous works.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The writing was great but this book just... wasn’t for me. I spent most of the time reading it confused, and as soon as my brain started catching up with the book the story and writing wandered off elsewhere. Pretty sentences are nice but I’d really rather understand what the hell is happening.

Contemporary, energetic and kooky, this is a read centred around gingerbread. It is the route to everything, in a fairy-tale esque tale of oddity.

Harriet is a gifted teacher raising her daughter, Perdita, alone. She comes from Druhastrana, a fictional country, in the borders of the Czech Republic. I think it tells of Harriet’s youth through storytelling to her daughter. With a hint of the magical as well as the bizarre, I found it bubbling and rambling in its delivery.
I can reflect the skill in the writing, the way the prose weaves and is interwoven in a modern and mystical world, but I didn’t quite get it. The dialogues were tedious. Rather than entertain me, it bemused me. Instead of enjoyment it felt a bit of a chore as the story and its construction, no matter how clever didn’t hold me. It felt like it tried to be clever and blend in too many things; folklore, politics, drama, the trials of being a teenager, Shakespeare and literature. I think you need to savour each line and read it slowly to appreciate the writing, for otherwise it is a book with no plot. But the dialogue is pacey which makes this hard. Might work for some, but sadly not for me. Likely a marmite read.