num_pages: 372
description: The prize-winning bestselling author of Boy Snow Bird and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours returns with a bewitching and inventive novel.Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children's stories--equal parts wholesome and uncanny from the tantalizing witch's house in Hansel and Gretel to the man-shaped confection who one day decides to run as fast as he can--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 Druhstrana the far-away (and according to Wikipedia non-existent) land of Harriet Lee's early youth. In fact the world's truest lover of the Lee family gingerbread 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.
language: English
title: Gingerbread
publisher: Random House Large Print Publishing