Fairytale and history, wilderness and civilisation collide in this brilliant and magical new novel from the author of Little Exiles.
In Belarus, a land of endless ancient forests, an orphaned boy must scatter his mother’s ashes. His mama has exacted a solemn promise: to stay beside and protect grandfather, whatever happens.
On their journey into the woodland, hunks of mama’s delicious gingerbread sustain the young boy as grandfather’s magical tales push the harsh world away.
But the driving snow masks a frozen history of long-buried secrets. And as man and child forage further, grandfather’s tales turn to terrible truths of times past.
Fairytale and history interweave in this magical, haunting tale of the lengths a boy must go to, in order to survive.
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780007488896
Number of pages: 442
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 29 mm
Weight: 320 g
Language: English
Praise for Gingerbread: ‘Gingerbread is a novel of perfect balance, where past reaches into present, cruel history into fable, and the land itself, the forests of old, into vulnerable human hearts. With each turn of the page the atmosphere intensifies…’ ALI SHAW, author of The Girl With Glass Feet Praise for Little Exiles: ‘A superb novel’ DAILY MAIL ‘A heartbreaking story, very powerfully dramatised’ THE TIMES ‘LITTLE EXILES … it's knockout – Robert has his own unique voice and his own angle on an extraordinary period of history. It's just beautifully written and told with such emotional precision, with a character in Jon Heather who is completely beguiling and so worth fighting for. I really, really loved it. If I hadn't made Oranges and Sunshine I would definitely be thinking about its potential for screen' Jim Loach, Director of Oranges & Sunshine
Heart the Lover
Atmosphere
I Who Have Never Known Men
Yesteryear
Wild Dark Shore
The Things We Never Say
When the Cranes Fly South
The Long Shoe
What We Can Know
We All Live Here
Taiwan Travelogue
The Eights
The Daisy Chain Flower Shop
I felt oddly drawn into this book, despite my initial belief that it would be a slow and overdrawn out story.
I can't begin to tell you how wrong I was! The book follows the tragic story of a boy's family,...
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The five star system doesn't seem to be adequate when it comes to books like this. Having read Little Exiles, I was expecting this to be good, but couldn't anticipate just how well written, and horrifying... More
Every expectation I had for this novel was turned on its head. This is a stunning story, a fairy tale twisted around a narrative of a boy and his grandfather on a journey into the woods, and a spiral into madness.... More
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