This time my favorite detail was that Harriet enjoys writing five-star reviews on Amazon in order to counteract the bad one-star reviews. Whenever I read your work I love looking for mentions of the modern and mundane juxtaposed with the more fantastical stuff. The normal and the strange are on the same level. It’s made up, but it knows that it’s made up, and it’s not trying to reconcile its contradictions. I suppose it’s a warning that what I write is made up, but it’s also very, very made up. It’s that conversation I have with strangers when I say, “I write books.” And they say, “What kind of books?” and I just say, “Fiction.” I think describing it as just fiction does make sense. How would you describe your work to someone who hasn’t read you before? I mean, not really, but I was ready for you to throw me some curveballs.
I just wrote it and then was like, “Oh no, I have to describe what this is.” I was very confidently going along like “this all makes sense” and then at the end being like, “I cannot describe what this is overall.” I think you just have to read it.
It was actually very difficult to come of up with something for Gingerbread. You pull readers in with a fairy tale premise and then destroy their expectations. I’m always fascinated by where your books go plot-wise, because it’s not always evident in the jacket copy.
Over Skype, we talked about Amazon reviews, the believability of talking dolls, and the magic of telling unverifiable stories. Gingerbread references Tinder and Ariana Grande and Skype conversations, among others. Sitting on her daughter’s bed, surrounded by four of her daughter’s dolls who just so happen to be able to speak, Harriet tells the story of her remarkable childhood in Druhastrana, a country somewhere in Central Europe whose Wiki page, in the world of Gingerbread, identifies it as an “alleged nation state of indeterminable geographic location.” The reader, along with Perdita and her dolls, get to listen in on Harriet’s astonishing bedtime story.Īs always, Oyeyemi juxtaposes her fantastical storybook setting where just about anything can happen, with signifiers that firmly place the action in modern times. When Perdita’s quest for the truth of her origins lands her in trouble, it’s up to Harriet to spill all of the family secrets. whose teenage daughter Perdita has more than a few questions about her roots. Gingerbread has always been a guiding force in the life of Harriet Lee, an immigrant to the U.K. Gingerbread is Oyeyemi’s latest, an audacious take on the food that housed a witch and nourished Hansel and Gretel. She twists familiar stories in entirely unpredictable ways, and her books never end up where you thought they would when you started. Helen Oyeyemi is a master of reinventing tropes from traditional fairy tales to say something entirely new about the world we live in.
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