Rather than emulate the original’s plot, Oyeyemi digs into the key feelings the tale conjured in childhood. Just as she did with her previous novel Boy, Snow, Bird (a loose retelling of “Snow White”), Oyeyemi offers an impressionistic take on her source material. Oyeyemi’s new novel Gingerbread is, in very loose and not entirely accurate terms, the British author’s remix of the Brothers Grimm cannibal story. So no matter what the book jacket or press notes say, such adaptions are neither new nor bold. Even if you prefer to stick with literature, the remixed fairy tale has been used in literary fiction since Donald Barthelme’s 1967 take on Snow White and seemed to officially become its own genre with the success of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked in 1995. Adapting old legends into new films and into experiences is essentially what Walt Disney based his empire on, and we’re currently living in the world he built. It could be argued that fairy tales form the backbone-or at least some vertebrae–of today’s pop culture.
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