Gingerbread

This book is written in an extremely strange, surrealist style and is definitely not for everyone. I found it tough to get into at first, but I'm glad I stuck it out. The bulk of the story is a mother explaining to her daughter the circumstances of her birth (which are of course very weird, involve more gingerbread than you'd think, and sound like a fairy tale). The book had a lot to say about capitalism, hierarchies, charity, immigration, and just relationships in general - there are some darkly hilarious moments with the parent-teacher committee at the daughter's school, for example - and I would have rated it 4 stars but the actual ending kind of disappointed me. It sort of seemed to run out of steam.