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The Gingerbread Woman cover art

The Gingerbread Woman

By: Jennifer Johnston
Narrated by: Nicola Barber
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Summary

On a rainy afternoon on Killiney Hill, a young man walking, without his overcoat, happens upon a woman gazing out over Dublin bay, standing perilously close to the edge. From their testy encounter develops a remarkable friendship which will enable each to face afresh their very different, damaged pasts, and to look, however tentatively, toward the future.

©2000 Jennifer Johnston (P)2014 Audible Inc.

What listeners say about The Gingerbread Woman

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Beautifully written

The voices of the two central characters were so real and true. I loved the style of writing.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

beautiful language

The accents annoyed me as neither characters had a Dublin nor an Antrim accent, but the story is interesting and jennifer johnston has a beautiful language that gives food for thought.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful tale

What a beautiful novel, full of pain and loss. Jennifer Johnson’s style is so poetic. A real find. Will be looking up other titles.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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might be better reading it

The storyline actually isn't awful - the lives of a grieving man and a physically and emotionally fragile woman intersect for a brief while while she deals with her heartbreak over her married lover and he refuses to get over the death of his wife and child two years earlier. However, neither character was particularly likeable, particularly Clara so it seemed fairly out of character for her to invite this random stranger into her home and the German and Italian bits scattered throughout just seemed a bit of a pretentious and unnecessary device to make the book more literary.

The biggest problem for me was that the narration was atrocious - please get actual Irish people to narrate the voices of Irish characters, the fact that the narrator didn't take the trouble to find out how to correctly pronounce Dalkey and Dun Laoghaire is poor given that the characters are Irish and she's meant to be speaking in Irish accents for the majority of the book. Lar didn't seem to know if he was from Northern Ireland, Birmingham, Newcastle or the West Country - his accent was all over the place and Clara's was fairly inconsistent too. This really ruined the listening experience for me - I'd quite happily listen to an otherwise good narrator read a book in their own accent rather than attempt accents they clearly can't do.

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1 person found this helpful