![]() ![]() ![]() But in spite of a lasting foundational image, the novel shows its promise to be unsettling, rather than comforting. It outlasts all daintier gifts”), over more than three generations of women. It’s what lasts over time (“ keeps and keeps. It is not humble, nor is it dusty in the crumb.” In the novel, gingerbread serves as both family heirloom and metaphor. There's no nostalgia baked into it, no hearkening back to innocent indulgences and jolly times at nursery. Oyeyemi’s seventh book, Gingerbread, is an uncanny novel that opens: “Harriet Lee’s gingerbread is not comfort food. If we read procedurals to enjoy a sense of order restored, everything put it in its place, we read Oyeyemi for the opposite reason, yet she is no less suspenseful. ![]() After reading any of her novels or her short story collection, you emerge as if from a dream, your sense of how things work pleasurably put out of order. IS THERE AN AUTHOR working today who is comparable to Helen Oyeyemi? She might be the only contemporary author for whom it’s not hyperbole to claim she’s sui generis, and I don’t think it’s a stretch either to say she’s a genius, as opposed to talented or newsworthy or relevant or accomplished, each of her novels daring more in storytelling than the one before. ![]()
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