The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel

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Jun 16, 2010 06:11:11

The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle).

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±1±: Best Buy Aimee Bender writes a thought provoking novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. If one was to dissect each word or let each word stand on its own, it may appear obvious of what the premise of the storyline is about. Of course food has been used within literary terms as a metaphor of life, nourish, gluttony, hunger, i.e. feeds the mind, food fest galore for the mind. Main character Rose Edelstein has the knack of tasting emotions or empathizing with the people around that covers the five senses and culinary fetes that her mother attempts and succeeds. And as an observer she keeps things together within her dysfunctional family filled with numerous conflicts and dramas that focuses on her older brother Joseph, who is about six years her senior and his dilemmas are not always written in black and white with a cream filling inside like an Oreo cookie; the second section of the novel appropriately titled "Joseph," show the complexities and ironies that arise and the bizarre twists that Rose, her mother and father, and friend George encounter.

Indeed, the interesting part about the book is Rose but Joseph's character highlights the novel as well and adds the metaphysical, realism, and sublime elements to the character traits and storyline. It is obvious after the first few chapters that Joseph is special delicate creature who is in a world all his own and may also be compared to a lost soul or "space cadet" despite his quirkiness and wiz kid demeanor who had a tremendous interest in information and science, most importantly astronomy and associating at a young age with UCLA's department of cosmology and high hopes of entering USC and CalTech but happened to suffer from medical issues at a young age that did not appear to be specifically mentioned in the novel but suggested. He is highly intelligent but not as precocious as his sister who judges him as detached but little did she know he is aware of the environment around him as his 7th grade best friend George could understand as readers will see by the end of the book. While everyone worries where Joseph has disappeared, George remains calm and knows he is bound to turn up any moment.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is one of those books that may take more than reading to understand the gist of the story. But after taking the time to interconnect the complex relationship that Rose, Joseph, and her parents possess, the book is insightful and is recommended for summer reading and after.
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