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

Authors

  • G. Vetriselvi

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. Oyeyemi presents  not exactly a contemplation over a specific trait of society or a fusion of distressing state of three female characters and their vision towards optimism. It is rather a combination of sweet and pungent emotions that weave the narrative and impart it its vibrancy. Oyeyemi opines,

Published

2020-11-01

Issue

Section

Articles