Book Review: Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

Joana .
Oct 28, 2020
3 min read

Updated: Jan 13, 2021

Harriet Lee’s gingerbread is not comfort food. There’s no nostalgia baked into it, no harkening back to innocent indulgences and nursery times. It is not humble, nor is it dusty in its crumb.

I'll be completely honest and admit that the cover of this book was the first to catch my attention and it was only because of that that I was interested in the story/author. Further to that, I must confess that I underestimated some of the reviews regarding this piece of literature... And if anything, I was pushed even further to read it!

You can't deny the contrast of blue and golden on the cover isn't just breathtaking!

...

Alas, I can only blame myself for what happened next

...

I ’m not sure how to put this....

Try putting it in terms of gingerbread.

The story starts with a girl, Harriet, narrating her life in London. Her mother makes the best gingerbread in town and that's what they're known for. So far, it was all sweet and loveable. She goes on talking about her family's history, the Lee's, her town, her school days, her friends... and her mother's gingerbread, to which she is addicted to, where she fits in all of this, and the other ways to spell her name (Harriet).

Not long after, it becomes quite clear that the prose was starting to lengthen and the "conversations" were quite confusing (I thought it was just a new approach to an internal dialogue). There were other characters to the story, but it was all simply lost within the text.

I salute Oyeyem for her beautiful skills in prose! But the prose was mixed with the dialogue(s) in a baking bowl set, that for a while I thought it was all just a memoir of a girl named Harriet, living in London, munching on her mother's gingerbread... It definitely felt like I was just going through a 300-paged descriptive essay... .. It was absolutely not clear where her internal dialogue stops and the conversation with her friends start!

Now, If the said story was not ambiguous enough, throw in the pot different timelines and some... magical realism *smh* Only Murakami seems to pull through magical realism somehow, and that messes up with my head enough

I could be wrong here! This book might possibly be the best one written in the history of novels, but I'm too simple to grasp its beauty and the deeper sense to it all. I truly pushed myself to finish this book, though I'm not sure what I was hoping for (!?) It's a miracle that I was able to get through those pages...

Short Analysis:

Book cover: (5 stars) Absolutely breathtaking

Writing style: (2 stars) Oyeyem has a beautiful skill when it comes to composing prose. However, it is quite clear that she's abused her skill (in prose). She's attempted a modern take to presenting the dialogue between the characters and gambled her way into the foreign land of magical realism. It takes great courage to step into the land of the unknown, being aware of the 50/50 chance of either pulling it through Very Well or completely flunking it... I believe Oyeyem has unknowingly dug herself a trap and buried her work in it

Story content: (0.5 stars) A very confusing potatoe mush of a work. Sometimes it's better to take things slow and experiment on a lab rat, rather than waste time and resources to publish something as awful and disappointing as Gingerbread

Plot: (0 stars) ... I'm not sure what the plot was... Was it intended for this book to have a plot?! Not sure what Oyeyem's plot logic was, to begin with