You know the blinking white guy gif? That was me for like the entirety of this book. I still have no idea what the hell it was about or what happened to why. This one needs a deep read, not a piece-by-piece metro read but I gave it what I had and I am still so lost. Can someone smarter than me tell me what I just read?
Gingerbread is part Hansel and Gretel, part bedtime story, and part fever dream. There’s the start of the book where it feels like nothing happens for pages and pages and pages and then all of a sudden WHOMP Henrietta (the mom) finds her teenage daughter Perdita unconscious and I had to read those two pages at least twice before I figured out what happened. When Perdita finally wakes, Henrietta takes most of the rest of the book to tell her the story of their ancestral homeland Druhástrana, which may or may not exist. There are wells and poverty and Gingerbread Girls and I was never quite sure if the gingerbread was welcome or even particularly good. This book is … strange.
I don’t mean strange as in “bad but I don’t want to say it.” It’s enthralling, I just don’t understand it. Magical realism is very much so a part of this book (including Perdita’s talking dolls that simply are) and yes I do hate it when things are over explained and I go on ad nauseum about how much I love new worlds where I have to figure things out but this one may have just been too open for me. But I’ll give it another shot.