Gingerbread

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Boy, Snow, Bird and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours 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.