A review by ceallaighsbooks
Gingerbread by Robert Dinsdale

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“It must have been very frightening, to live so wild,” whispers the boy. “Oh,” says Grandfather, “it was frightening, but it wasn’t because of the wild out there. It was the wild…in here.” He folds his wizened hands around the boy’s and presses the bundle of fingers to the boy’s breast, above his heart beating like an injured bird. “Is it true?” asks the boy. “Oh,” says Grandfather, with the deepest exhalation. “I know it is true, for one was there who told me of it.”

TITLE—Gingerbread 
AUTHOR—Robert Dinsdale 
PUBLISHED—2014

GENRE—folk horror; #WholesomeHorror
SETTING—Belarus, 1960s?
MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—Eastern European history, the forest, fairy & folk tales, oral storytelling traditions vs. “history”, family, WW II, community vs solitary living styles, grief, trauma, the sanctity, power & danger of Nature

WRITING STYLE—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
CHARACTERS—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
STORY/PLOT—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
BONUS ELEMENT/S—Really really creepy/unsettling folk horror story with a lot of really excellent fairytale themes and tropes.
PHILOSOPHY—⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Folk tales are just another way of telling history. They come from before the time when there was writing and books. Just families, in houses like this, staring into that outer dark and telling tales about what happened out there.” “But there were still forests,” whispers the boy. “And always will be,” he replies.”

This book was just a lot darker than I was really expecting it to be… 🙈 and it just kept getting darker and darker as you go along and the story never goes where you think it’s going to go and I was super stressed waiting for something *REALLY* bad to happen even though I also felt like this was supposed to be one of those #WholesomeHorror stories… So I guess a lot of really really good creepy tension… I’m not a big thriller/horror reader unless it’s fairy tale related so I’m just not used to that and it gave me a migraine but yeah. 😅

BUT in the end, I loved everything about this book and all of the choices the author makes. I don’t want to say too much because being able to really absorb the tension of this book is I think key to getting the best reading experience out of it.

This book was quite clever both in its execution of a truly unsettling folk horror tale as well as a sort of play off of fairytale tropes and themes surrounding forests. I loved the exploration of what makes a person human versus a feral creature of the forest and what that suggests philosophically and ethically speaking *and* that there was really no clear or simple answer by the end of the book but an emphasis on the complexity of human nature and the importance for finding that balance between survival and comfort, community and independence, and “technology” and the Natural world for one’s self. Also! What makes a family? Another theme that was explored and left open to the reader’s interpretation which I loved.

The writing style itself seemed to communicate these themes as well: at times feeling simplistic, at times disjointed—the use of fairytale like repetition was excellently handled—and at other times stunningly beautiful and poignant—but still very subtle! While reading the book I’m not sure that I was ever like “oh my god I’m obsessed, this is definitely going to be a five star read for me”… it wasn’t until after I’d finished the book and thought about it for a day that I decided that it was in fact incredible and would definitely be one of my alltime favorites. A mark of a truly great book, imo. This will definitely be a book I reread yearly during the Dark Season and winter holidays!

(Random detail: this is the second book in a *row* that I’ve read where a young girl bathes her inordinately strange, new boy companion… 😂)

“…for the forest stretches until the very end of the earth and, if you follow its paths, you can never come back home… The woods are wide and the woods are wild, and the woods are the world forever and ever.”

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TW // cancer, death of parent, poverty, animal death (incl. a dog!), gore, body horror, cannibalism, other scary stuff haha 🙈😅 (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—
  • Starve Acre, by Andrew Michael Hurley
  • In the House in the Dark of the Woods, by Laird Hunt
  • A Wild Winter Swan, by Gregory Maguire
  • Krampus: The Yule Lord, by BROM
  • The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper