Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Ratings63
Average rating3.6
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
—
WHAT'S THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE ABOUT?
I don't think I have it in me to do a decent job of this, so I'm just going to use the text from the flap of the dust jacket.
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 slice.
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. Anything can be revealed at any meal. She can't eat her brother Joseph's toast; a cookie at the local bakery is laced with rage; grape jelly is packed with acidic resentment.
Rose's gift forces her to confront the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—truths about her mother's life outside the home, her father's strange detachment, Joseph's clash with the world.
Yet as Rose grows up, she realizes there are some secrets that even her taste buds cannot discern.
THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE
I am trying to do the 2021 Popsugar Challenge this year. Or should I say I am trying to complete more than eight tasks that I did last year. I am happy to announce that I am halfway there and with this book, I have completed four tasks.
When I first started reading this book, I was intrigued by the concept. Rose, the main character, develops the ability to feel the emotions of the people who have cooked anything she eats. The book starts well as Rose begins to understand her “abilities” and is written in a way that seems realistic for a girl her age who cannot quite figure out what is going on. As the book progresses, Rose begins to identify upsetting information related to her mother. While all this is going on, her brother, who is described by the author as a bit of an oddball with no real explanation, also begins to act strangely. Then there is the backstory of Rose's distant relationship with her father, which climaxes with a story about his own family that relates to Rose's own powers. The problem I had is that there was a lot of emotion in the food and it was described beautifully, but none of it played out successfully within the family. It was just sort of left hanging. Additionally, the story with the brother and his own “gifts” was almost overload, nor was it well explained. The ending felt very rushed to me, as if the author had some great ideas, lumped them all in one book. I wish some details were better explained even if that means the book would have been a bit longer. This is my first book by Aimee Bender and also my first 3-star read this year. While I gave it a lower rating than you might expect I will be interested to read something new by the author if something becomes available soon.
7% finished: A six year old has an allowance? A six year old saves up this allowance? A six year old uses these savings to buy a professional-grade dental pick from their local dentist? What the fuck. If this was set in the 1950s, or possibly in a country outside the US, this could maybe be believable, but a few years ago a woman in South Carolina was arrested for letting her 9 year old go to the park alone. This book is about tasting the emotions of others in the food they make, and that concept is more believable than a six year old buying a dental pick.
I'm going to keep reading this book, but it has taken a huge hit with this ridiculousness. We'll see if it can come through....
Ok, I finished the book. I'm glad I kept going because the book picks up the pace, and the author takes some risks that I think really paid off.
My big problem at the start of the book was the writing style. It felt like the author wanted the intimacy of 1st person narration while also giving us all sorts of insights into the other characters, but insider detail on that level requires 3rd person narration. This made the writing feel really uneven and broke the flow more than once. My other problem early in the book were several implausible details (see above), and I feel like the editors are partly to blame here. What seems like a charming detail to an author can be so out of place to a reader that it jolts them out of the flow; an editor's job is to find those details and ruthlessly slice them out. The author's editor did her no favors by letting these details slide in this book.
Those are my complaints, here come the compliments. This book is not at all the book I thought it was going to be, it was much weirder and deeper. The story is wonderful at giving a glimpse of something, then looping back to give you the full scoop; sometimes right away, sometimes much later. There are also things left dangling, that are never fully spelled out, and I love when an author trusts the reader enough to do this. And finally the story draws you in, it has that certain pull that a good story has, something more than the sum of its parts. The more I read it, the more I wanted to read it.
So, this book has a rocky start, but it gets good.
I was certainly drawn to this book by its title. And even the premise, of a girl who can taste people's emotions in the food they prepare. The book is beautifully written and engrossing. But it is a strange to the point of confusing and a bit disturbing to me. And although the plot was unique, I didn't connect much with the characters. Interesting, but not my cup of tea (or slice of cake).
3.5 stars would be more accurate. I enjoyed the characters, story, and plot, but it simply felt like there was something missing that could have made it extraordinary.
God that was weird! Written/reads more like a short story rather than a novel. I was all set to give it 2 stars but the unsettling & interesting ending bumped it up a notch for me.
This book is an odd one. It was certainly not what I expected.
I neither liked it nor disliked it. It just is.
An interesting premise that was just not capitalized on.
The main character can taste emotion within food. This automatically intrigued me, and I wanted to buy this. However, I eventually rented it from the library and I am very glad that I did so.
This is one of those books where I wanted to like it. It had interesting ideas within, but it was not that cohesive and the writing was a little too bleak for my taste.
Well what can I say about this book? It is intriguing, annoying, ridiculous and just plain weird. Never have I come across a book like this before but strangely I did enjoy elements and I know it will be a book I will remember for a long time.
Nine year old Rose discovers that she has a special gift, when eating food she can taste the emotions of the chef or the person who has prepared it. The emotions of others consume her whilst eating and affect her enjoyment of food. Her brother also starts to behave strangely and this causes disruptions within her family life. There are a lot of negative emotions weaved through the book and some shocking revelations around her brother's behaviour. You truly have to read it to understand the ridiculousness of the plot. It's a bit like Marmite, you will either love it or loath it.
Really liked this one! It was an odd little gem of a book.
I had high expectations for this book, because the premise sounded unusual and fascinating. I was pretty disappointed with the book overall, though, for several reasons.
First, I have some difficulty with non-standard punctuation and prose, and Bender's lack of quotation marks in dialogue made this book frustrating to read at times. I'm not a big fan of stylistic creativity in that way, though I can see that it lent a certain disconnectedness to this book.
Second, I felt as though many of the plot lines were left uninvestigated. Rose's father remains a mystery for the majority of the novel, though that is somewhat resolved by the end. The circumstances of Rose's brother Joseph remain alarming, unfinished, and unusually vague. Bender's world is magical reality; things are both like we know them and not, but there's not much clarification as to why or how.
This book was not charming or humorous, as some reviewers have said. I found a surprising lack of humanness in this book, which is also contrary to what many have said. Instead, I found it largely underdeveloped and flat.
Having just returned from France where all citizens, I think, are born with the ability to taste emotions in food, I must say that I loved this book. Loved it. You must read it. It's fantastic.
Rose Edelstein discovers on her ninth birthday that she can sense emotions of those who prepare food in the food she eats. The cook. The field hand. The farmer. The factory worker. The waiter.
It is a difficult gift. She learns of her mother's deep sadness. She finds she is unable to eat most food as she learns it is troubling to know the real emotions of most people.
There are lots of side stories, including a quirky brother and his brilliant friend and her mother's path to escape sadness. It all made for a thoughtful read.