Gingerbread (ENG)

Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic childrens stories - equal parts wholesome and uncanny - beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe. Perdita Lee and her mother Harriet may appear your average schoolgirl and working mother but they are anything but. For one thing, their home is a gold-painted seventh-floor flat with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then theres the gingerbread. As we follow the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work and wealth, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that holds a constant value . . . Endlessly surprising and satisfying, written with Helen Oyeyemis inimitable style and imagination, Gingerbread is a true feast for the reader. Review Endlessly inventive, The Oprah MagazineRich, clever . . . lively and playful . . . both thoughtful and lavish . . . a bold book with a great deal of depth and mischief, Financial TimesOpen this book, I entreat you, and get lost in a new country . . . Oyeyemis whirling sparkler of a story is loving, strange and entirely exhilarating -- Marina EndicottWritten with such verve and energy that it’s hard to resist, Emerald StreetOne of our most singular and inventive contemporary voices. The great joy of Oyeyemis work is its sense of complete freedom . . . when the quality of the writing - and the scope of the imagination - is this good, its hard not to be swept away . . . There is much to revel in here: Oyeyemis inventions are as surprising and as deft as her modern-mythic prose style . . . Oyeyemis sentences continually sparkle with viciously precise humour . . . Gingerbread is delicious -- Stuart Evers, SpectatorHer sentences are like grabbing onto the tail of a vibrant, living creature without knowing what you’ll find at the other end. It’s absolutely exhilarating . . . Fans of Oyeyemis will expect an electric, genre-defying style, and wont be disappointed. New readers should prepare to be dizzied . . . Gingerbread is jarring, funny, surprising, unsettling, disorienting and rewarding. It requires the reader to be quick-footed and alert. And by the end, it is clear what has grounded the story from the start - the tender and troubling humanity of its characters . . . This is a wildly imagined, head-spinning, deeply intelligent novel -- Eowyn Ivey, New York TimesWhimsical and mischievous, a modern-mythic romp that’s very clever (maybe at times too clever), often frustrating, always fun . . . Oyeyemi is a delightful writer -- Francesca Carington, Daily TelegraphThe sly elegance and surrealism of Oyeyemis writing weave a spell around a story that once again concerns adolescent wounds, misplaced love and family lies -- Amanda Craig, Literary ReviewIdiosyncratically brilliant, she spins a tale about three generations of women and the gingerbread that is their curse and their legacy . . . This fantastic and fantastical romp is a wonderful addition to her formidable canon., Publishers WeeklyOyeyemis great skill is to interleave and interweave the fantastical and the political. In this respect, she is akin to writers such as Téa Obrecht, Jenni Fagan and Naomi Alderman, who manage to make the eerie and the urgent close. Gingerbread is at one and the same time - like the double eyes - a reworking of fable and an incisive look at class, migration, exclusion and loss -- Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday About the Author Helen Oyeyemi is the author of The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House, White is for Witching (which won the Somerset Maugham Award), Mr Fox, Boy, Snow, Bird, Gingerbread and the short story collection What is Not Yours is Not Yours. In 2013, Helen was included in Grantas Best of Young British Novelists.

MOJE KNIHOVNY