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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cakeby Aimee Bender |
Patti's Pages: I was disappointed in the first half of this book. Narrated by nine-year-old Rose, I felt as though I were reading a children's book, especially since several members of Rose's family have supernatural powers that are more like supernatural afflictions. Rose, for example, has the ability to conjure up the emotions of the people who grew, manufactured, and/or prepared the food that she eats. This aspect of the book is a variation on the theme of Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate. At any rate, for Rose, eating at home becomes almost unbearable, as she cannot stomach her mother's loneliness-laced meals. Rose later witnesses through food her mother's secret love affair, which does at least make her mother's meals, full of excitement tainted by guilt, more edible for Rose.
Rose's detached father has a seemingly unreasonable phobia of hospitals, and her brother Joseph has a most peculiar knack that seems at first to be perhaps the ability to time travel or to apparate, a la Harry Potter. Joseph is a scientific genius, and I was sure that he had developed a means for beaming himself from place to place, losing molecules with each transformation, but that is not exactly what he's up to, and the book gains momentum as his story unfolds.
The scene where Rose gets the gist of what's happening with Joseph's
increasingly frequent disappearances changed my entire attitude about the book for the better.
The "particular sadness" of this scene is so vivid that it is forever etched in my mind.
This book is also reminiscent of Elizabeth McCracken's The Giant's House, in which a character's
exceptionality renders him a social anomaly. What so impresses me about Bender's story is its
miraculous ability to evoke deep emotion in the reader, with characters who are so profoundly
fictional in their unusual talents and yet so profoundly human in how they cope with these
unwanted gifts.
Rating: ****
Wanda Cohen: I totally agree with Donna.
This is one of those books that you pick up because someone else liked it and you start
it and keep waiting for something to make it great. I have to say that it is interesting.
It's about a family with super powers but each of them is so dysfunctional that the powers
hinder them rather than elevate them. They struggle with everyday life and their
relationship with each other. I felt sorry for all of them.
Now, having said all that, I have to applaud Aimee for originality. It would have made a pretty
great short story but sadly it fails as a full length novel.
Rating: **
Donna Newman: My summer reading tends to be influenced
by recommendations from various morning programs. This year I was lead to The
Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Based on my wait time on the reserve list at
the library, many others were steered toward this book, too. The premise of
the book is that Rose Edelstein, the young protaganist, is able to taste the
emotions of any cook who produces the food she consumes. Have I lost you yet?
If you are not a fan of magical realism in literature, stay away from this book.
The family is totally dysfunctional - grandmother who never sees her relatives
but sends junk as presents, mother who seems to go from task to task in order
to find herself, father who is afraid of hospitals, and brother who is a genius
with no social skills whatsoever. I wish they would have included a good recipe for lemon cake.
Rating: **
