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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cakeby Aimee Bender Hardcover, 292 pg. Read: November 30-December 1, 2021 |
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.
Particularly Sad
By page 15 of the novel, I’d already decided the title was pretty descriptive of the book. That impression never left off. Every page drips with sadness—even the most joyful moments of the characters’ lives are draped in it. There’s no joy, no happiness—the best is some contentedness and satisfaction that Rose finds in the last twenty pages. I’m not sure I remember a novel so consistent in the emotional tone.
So, what did I think about The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake?
This is a split decision for me. The Bender’s prose and language deserve at least 4 stars, maybe more. But for my reaction to the book? It’s probably a 2.
Aimee Bender can write—her language is fantastic. The prose is as delicious as the food described isn’t. This is the kind of writing that demands attention (maybe it demands a bit too loudly on occasion). If not for what comes in the next paragraph, I’d be requesting every one of her books from the library as soon as I publish this post.
But I found the style off-putting, I didn’t care about a single one of these characters and their various plights. I wasn’t that curious about Rose’s “special skills” (or any others displayed by characters). I didn’t care about the story, or anything else. While the writing was dazzling, it seemed distant and detached (a neat trick for a first-person narrative)—and it kept me distant and detached.
I absolutely expect to be the exception to the rule here, that just about everyone else fawns all over this. But…oh, well. For my money, if you want something written like this but with characters/situations/writing that engages you, you’re better off picking up a Tiffany McDaniel novel.
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