Helen Oyeyemi’s Gingerbread: A Fabricated Fairytale of three generations

Abstract

Helen Oyeyemi’s storytelling has reached its excellence with her 6th novel, Gingerbread. She
certainly has gained ground in a short run. Gingerbread oscillates between the past and the present
allowing varied perceptions into reality relying on conflicts where the characters exhibit collective or
individual consciousness. Modelled on German fairy tale, the narrative of Gingerbread is mingled
with Oyeyemi’s aesthetic impulses and emerges as yet another one of her outlandish narratives.Her
penchant for ‘thick, rich flavor’ imparts this narrative piquancy, characteristic to psychic probing.