The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel

by Aimee Bender

Hardcover, 2010

Status

Available

Genres

Publication

Doubleday (2010), Edition: 1, 292 pages

Description

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).… (more)

Media reviews

San Francisco Chronicle

Had the novel focused only on this imaginative food conceit, it would have been merely clever - but Bender is too good a writer for that. She uses Rose's secret burden as a means of exploring the painful limits of empathy, the perils of loneliness, and Rose's deeply dysfunctional family.

— 1 more

Los Angeles Times

Bender has inherited at least three profound strains, three genetic codes or lines of inquiry from her forebears in American literature. There's the Faulknerian loneliness, the isolation that comes from our utter inability, as human beings, to truly communicate with each other; the crippling power

of empathy (how to move forward when everyone around you is in pain) that is so common in our literature it's hard to attach a name to it, and the distance created by humor, a willfully devil-may-care attitude that allowed, for example, Mark Twain to skip with seeming abandon around serious issues like racism and poverty.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50

I was very much looking forward to reading The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake but was sadly disappointed. I found this to be a bizarre, depressing story with absolutely no joy. I don’t expect all my books to have happy endings, but this was a slow dark ride that just seemed to just run out of

gas and coast to a stop.

The story of Rose a young girl who on her ninth birthday discovers she is cursed with the ability to taste feelings in the food she eats sounded intriguing. Instead I was treated to description after description of food that tasted gummy and thick or dry and chalky. The characters in this story are all strange, detached, and quite incomplete. From Rose herself to the rest of her emotionally unstable family, we are always just given small insights, never the bigger picture. So, her mother is sad and empty. Her father a dull blockhead. They both prefer to pretend a normalcy that doesn’t exist in this family. Rose’s brother Joseph who obviously is autistic, was again, I felt an incomplete character.

I believe the author is capable of much, much more. There were glimmers of good, descriptive writing here and there, but on the whole I felt she lacked direction. From her deliberate mispunctuation one gathers the author was trying to be innovative, but again, for me this didn’t work. I also felt the author wasn’t definite about whose story she was telling. The book starts with the focus on Rose but halfway through attention switches to her strange brother. Neither character was developed fully.

Perhaps it was me, but I finished the book feeling like I totally missed the whole point and I would recommend that this book gets a miss.

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24 more

LibraryThing member fyrefly98

Summary: Rose Edelstein requested that the cake for her ninth birthday be her favorite: lemon-chocolate cake. When she sneaks a piece of her cake the night before, she discovers that she can taste her mother's emotions in the cake... and that her seemingly loving, cheerful, active mother is

harboring a deep well of hollowness and despair. From that point onward, food becomes a curse for Rose, unable to eat a meal without tasting the secret emotions of the person who made it. Through food, Rose unwillingly learns the secrets of her family that no child should be burdened with: her mother's attempts to fill the emptiness inside her, her father's emotional and physical detachment from his family, her older brother's increasing isolation. But she also learns that her family harbors secrets deeper than other families... secrets that are too deep even to taste.

Review: I will put up with a lot for a book with a good premise, and this one had a great one. It's sort of the anti-Like Water for Chocolate; instead of one girl sending messages through food to everyone else, it's one girl receiving all of the messages that everyone else didn't even know they were sending. For that reason, it's not really a book for foodies: for Rose, the experience of food is a curse, not a blessing, and reading this book was enough to kill my appetite for a while (which is problematic, considering I normally do a lot of good reading over meals.) A quote on the first page of the ARC suggests that this book is the antidote to a bad day or a bad year, but I had the complete opposite reaction: the idea of one girl being a receptacle for so much pain and dysfunction and so many secrets, and completely unable to avoid it... that was more than a little bit of a downer. I mean, sadness in a book is fine, and this story definitely earns its weight, but it is not the cute and light book promised by the bright colors of the cover.

The writing itself was full and lovely, not heavy, but still full of the flavors and emotions that make up the story, to the point where you can almost imagine what a cake full of sadness would taste like. The prose was smooth enough that I was (almost) able to overlook the complete lack of quotation marks, which normally drives me absolutely bonkers. It did make some of the conversations hard to follow, though. (For example, does the sentence Yes, he's here, she said, finally. mean She said: "Yes, he's here, finally." or She finally said: "Yes, he's here."?)

However, despite the book's fantastic premise and lovely prose, it felt like there was a piece missing from the story. I can't put my finger quite on what that missing element was, but it's definitely there, just like the hole in the middle of Amy's chocolate lemon cake. I think part of it might be that the book gets really strange in the middle, which left me hoping that we'd get a good explanation for things, but the resolution, when it comes, wasn't really much of a resolution at all. The story attempts to wrap things up, but the end is not nearly as rich and as round as the beginning, and it makes the whole thing feel a little off-balance, and not quite as satisfying as I'd been hoping.

As a final thought, I absolutely love lemon desserts, and was going to make a lemon cake to go along with this review, but now I'm worried that it's going to taste like sadness and emptiness. If it turns out that this book has ruined lemon cake for me forever, I will have to come back and rethink my rating. Hrmph. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I think fans of literary fiction who are willing to deal with a little bit of magical-realism weirdness in their novels will probably have the best time with this book.

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LibraryThing member hideandread

The concept behind Bender's novel is truly unique: a little girl who can taste the feelings of those involved in the food-making process. I was surprised, therefore, when the book seemed more focused on the disintegration of her parents' marriage and the difficulties faced by her genius brother

rather than the problems surrounding the main character. Told from a small child's eyes, the feelings evoked were poignant and real, and I was drawn into the beautiful destruction.

Bender's pacing in this book is fantastic. The push and pull are tangible, and it turns reading into what it should be: an all-absorbing affair. With that being said, there were a few brief moments where she suddenly jumps into the past, and it takes a moment or two for me to realize what had just happened. All of these scenes are relevant, of course, but the shift is still abrupt, even for the start of a new chapter. The lead-up to the explanation behind Joe's disappearances was well-played, and the ultimate revelation is reasonable, but it lacks the impact that it could have had due to the suddenness of its delivery.

I find myself torn in how I feel about the writing style. On the one hand, it is simplistic, and it matched very well with the mentality of a youngster. Even so, the "he said/she said" method was overly grating in some sequences, where a greater variety of verb would have been greatly valued. The story ends when Rose is in her twenties, and while there is much to be said for consistency in an author's writing, the change dispatched my assumptions regarding her word choices. The lack of quotation marks was also disorienting, as I couldn't tell sometimes whether I was reading first person narrative or dialogue.

In short, this book was a worthwhile read with a few flaws. Even now, I feel emotionally wrung out, which says a great deal for the impact that the author made with her tale. If one can work one's way past the stylistic ticks and unclear designations for speech, one will find an enjoyable story to while away a few hours.

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LibraryThing member Jessica5

I've had this book out from the library for a while and I finally got to read it! The cover is so pretty and the story sounded really interesting with a girl who can taste the emotions of the person who made the food she eats. When I actually read it though, I was kind of let down. The storyline

was interesting enough, but I didn't really connect with Rose. I couldn't really follow her line of thinking and why she sometimes acted the way she did. At times, I felt like she never really grew up even though more than ten years pass throughout the book. The story was often jumpy, going from the present to past events with no real transition. Rose was a really interesting character and I think she was the only character I liked, even though I couldn't connect with her that much. I had absolutely no idea what was going on with her brother or what happened to him. The explanation was really weird and I just couldn't follow what was going on in Rose's mind. This book was very unique in it's story and characters, but the interesting ideas didn't come together in the story as well as I wanted it to.

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LibraryThing member ccayne

If you've read the jacket, you know this is a quirky book and the premise could fall flat in the hands of a less skilled writer. I loved it - Bender explores the strangeness of this family in understated, well-crafted prose and I was captivated by it. I never doubted Roses's strange ability and

easily suspened my disbelief for this story.

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LibraryThing member tututhefirst

I was so disappointed in this book. The premise, that 9 yr old Rose could taste the emotions of the people who made the food she ate was intriguing. Instead it was just boring. Noone in Rose's family seemed interested in her problem - it actually caused her to become ill when she saw negative

emotions-- and her dsyfunctional parents paid no attention to her absolutely weird brother either.

I kept reading this hoping it would expand into something I could understand, or latch onto. Instead, it simply got more weird, and more boring. I just could not find anything to like or to interest me in any of these characters. And there was no plot to speak of, so I decided not to waste any more time. I read 150 of the 295 pages. Enough.

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LibraryThing member esquetee

The story moved much, much slower than I expected and the magic realism elements were much, much more subtle than I hoped. Overall, it was an interesting story but it felt like it didn't really go anywhere to me. It makes for an excellent quick read - probably a great book to have on a vacation.

But it would have been better as a short story in a collection with other quirky, slightly fantastic short stories.

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LibraryThing member ufjunkie

When nine-year-old Rose discovers that she can taste the emotions of the people who prepare her food, she discovers many secret longings and desires.

The problem that I had with this story was that, despite the element of magical realism, the book was dull. The characters' lives were so ordinary and

uninteresting that I didn't care about any of them. The secrets that Rose discovered were typical: unhappiness, longing, fear. And the book's labored prose plodded along from page to page. Even the most exciting event in the story wasn't enough to shake me out of my apathy.

I thought the idea for the book was interesting, but the execution simply wasn't there. By the end of the book, I felt as empty and disappointed as Rose did whenever she ate.

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LibraryThing member abbylibrarian

Despite the beautiful writing, this one missed the mark for me. I didn't really understand the point of the story and I kept thinking that I would have liked it better if it had been YA and the reader had been more immediately there with Rose and not seeing everything through the grown-up lens. I

felt like there was cotton stuffing between me and Rose's story.

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LibraryThing member akblanchard

I loved this book, which is about a girl who can discern feelings of food preparers (not only cooks, but also the farmers and factory workers) in the food she eats. It’s beautifully written, suspenseful in parts, and totally believable, despite its many fantasy elements. Best book I’ve read in

a long time.

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LibraryThing member FrancescaForrest

(Review duplicates my LJ entry)

Usually I'm not very interested in the books that we read in my book group, but the most recent pick moved me tremendously. It had lots of things I like: a child viewpoint character (at least to start with; she's 22 by the end), characters who are all sympathetic in

their way, even the prickly ones, and deep deep love. It also had something I wasn't expecting in a so-called literary novel: superpowers.

The novel is The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender. It was sad, yes, but in a good way.

The main character, Rose, can tell the emotional state of everyone connected with the production of whatever food she's eating. This isn't just a matter of biting into the casserole your mother slams down on the table and saying, Deanna Troi-like, "I sense anger!" It's more complete and nuanced than that:

It was a homemade ham-and-cheese-and-mustard sandwich, on white bread, with a thin piece of lettuce in the middle. Not bad, in the food part. Good ham, flat mustard from a functional factory. Ordinary bread. Tired lettuce-pickers. But in the sandwich as a whole, I tasted a kind of yelling, almost. Like the sandwich itself was yelling at me, yelling love me, love me, really loud. The guy at the counter watched me closely.

Oh, I said.

My girlfriend made it, he said.

Your girlfriend makes your sandwiches? asked George.

She likes doing it, said the guy.

I didn't know what to say. I put the sandwich down.

What? said the guy.

The sandwich wants you to love it, I said.

The guy started laughing. My voice, though, was dull. George reached over and took a bite. Is that ham? he said.

The sandwich? asked the guy.

Was yelling at me, I said, closing my eyes. It was yelling at me to love it.

--Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (New York: Doubleday, 2010), 65.

I know a lot of people get annoyed at the trope in genre fiction of the reluctant superhero, who doesn't want her powers. But in this case, what the power represents is intense empathy, empathy with individual people, and by extension, maybe, with the human condition? And I imagine that really could be overwhelming. Rose finds different ways of coping with her gift, but other members of her family, who have gifts of their own, have a harder time of it. She reflects on this near the end of the book:

And just as he said it, like a bird across the sky, my brother flickered through my mind, and although the thought was half formed, it occurred to me that meals were still meals ... and I could pick and chose what I could eat and what I couldn't ... but what if whatever Joseph had felt every day had no shape like that? Had no way to be avoided or modified? Was constant? (266)

The way her brother copes is extreme, surreal, and ultimate, and Rose's way of accepting it seems, to me, to show that deep deep love I was mentioning. Some people are hard to love, but we can still love them, and some things are sad, but we can find a way to bear them.

And the book shows all that, and manages to be not at all as ponderous as this LJ entry. It's actually quite funny in places--and so perceptive about people, and how they behave.

I was really moved and impressed. Book group books, every now and then you're all right.

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LibraryThing member ilbooklvr

This book was so not what I expected. It is an intriguing notion, similar to Like Water for Chocolate, that the main character can taste the emotions of the cook when she eats. But she never did anything with this talent. Then, the focus shifts to her brother's extremely weird talent. I would have

been interested to read how he did what he could do. Another plot point that should have been developed was the father's idea that he also had a special gift, but purposely didn't develop it. Very strange book!

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LibraryThing member MissReadsTooMuch

In the beginning of Aimee Bender's novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, I was so intrigued. She wrote well about this poor young girl as she tasted all of the emotions of the food in front of her - sort of like For Water Like Chocolate - but in reverse, she feels the emotions of the cook,

rather than sending out her own emotions through food. And when the book stuck to Rose and her unusual ability, it was good, although for a nine-year old girl she was pretty emotionally precocious, able to accurately understand the complex feelings of a grown woman through a few bites. I don't think many kids that age would be able to separate their own reactions to the feeling they experienced from their mother's feelings. In fact, Rose is overly dispassionate about all of the relationships around her. Sometimes, it seems the only feelings she has are those she gets from food. The problem I had with the book is that rather than delve more deeply into the main character, Bender strays and then so did I. It wasn't as interesting a novel when she moved away from Rose and her tasting problems. The ending? I'll not post spoilers but the ending is the reason for my low rating - the wrap up with her father and brother, the disappearance of her mother has an important character - just left me wishing I hadn't read the book. Even so, I think I like Aimmee Bender and after reading reviews of her other novels, I'm going to try those. Readers like her so much that I want to give her another try.

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LibraryThing member TheCrowdedLeaf

This book is inside me now, and I’m somehow different for having read it.

Somewhere between the magical fantasy of Sarah Addison Allen, and the magical sadness of Alice Hoffman, is Aimee Bender’s magical book. A book about Rose, a girl who discovers, unexpectedly and unwanted, her ability to

taste people’s emotions in food. Alone and bewildered she embarks on a journey to explore her talent, a journey which often results in overwhelming sensations, uncovered secrets, and unprecedented outcomes.

We move with Rose as she learns of her talent, of her family’s secrets, and of the world surrounding her. She’s not a normal girl, she’s very much alone. She has friends, but she’s the one on the edge of the group, the one who could be there or not, and not many people would notice the difference. We are with her as she desperately tries to form a connection with her brother Joseph. But Joseph is also a loner, with only one friend, and he’s full of books and angst and something unexplained.

The books transitions frequently, starting with Rose’s difficult younger years trying to find food she can eat that won’t make her sick with depression or anger. We go through the years of issues with her parents, her father stoic, her mother yearning. We spend much time with Joseph and his story becomes so overwhelmingly sad it makes my heart hurt. We grow with Rose, and find her older as she discovers a path she can take toward a future that will make her happy. A path she tremulously sets out on, an experiment of self.

This is not a story with a beginning-middle-end type of plot. There is a beginning, and then the beginning just keeps on being. Every part has a newness to it, an unfounded, unexplored, beautifully untouched set of words that pulls you in and takes you. Like food to Rose, this book leaves me with an unexplained lingering of sadness. Light and innocent sadness. Sadness for no reason, but beautiful and untouchable.

Words like “amazing” and “fabulous” are too patronizingly cliché for The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. At all times charmingly funny and tragic, it just is what it is; something you should read, something that starts out different and takes a bit of getting used to, and then finishes like a ghost of words, whispered away on a breeze, leaving you wondering.

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LibraryThing member bragan

Young Rose Edelstein has a strange ability: whenever she eats, she can taste the history of the food's ingredients and the hidden emotions of the cook. Which can be a difficult and confusing thing, when you live in a family with secrets to keep.

It's a really inventive premise, one that works very

nicely as a metaphor for the ways in which children pick up on the emotional undercurrents that surround them. And it's generally well-written, with an interesting twist or two and a few touching moments. But somehow, I just never felt like I was connecting to the story or the characters as much as I should have. As if there were a faint sense of artificiality about the whole thing that prevented me from fully entering into the novel's world.

I think there's a number of reasons for that. For one, I spent far too much time unsure whether this story was taking place in the 1950s or the 2010s or sometime in-between, until a passing reference to computers several chapters in nailed it down at one end, and the realization halfway through that nobody had a cell phone nailed it down in the other. The sense of place -- it's set in LA -- is better, but even so, there's a sort of vagueness to the whole thing, a lack of any real specifics to ground it all. More problematically, I think that's also to some extent true of the characters. Bender tries to give them all individual quirks and histories, but, ultimately, they mostly still felt to me more like collections of generic character traits than people: the distant father, the unfulfilled mother, the introverted brother. Despite the main character's perceptive abilities, I never felt like I was seeing deeply into any of these people. Maybe that was meant to be part of the point, I don't know, but it was just never quite satisfying.

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LibraryThing member mldavis2

Not really a 'fantasy' genre, the author has chosen to incorporate some elements of mystery into an otherwise plausible account of the coming of age of Rose and her semi-dysfunctional family. Contrasts abound, with Rose's gift of taste contrasted to the discomforts it affords her; her father's love

of medical dramas yet fear of hospitals; and her brother's self-destruction from his own familial gifts and genius. This is an exceptional book for discussion groups, and one of the summer's best reads. 4.5 stars.

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LibraryThing member aimless22

What a wonderful book! I was intrigued by the premise. As I got to know Rose, her parents, her brother Joseph and their friend George, I grew to love them.
The lyrical beauty of many of Ms Bender's phrases struck me like a feather. I read them once, then again, then again. I reveled in their

fluidity, inventiveness and imagery.
Just a few examples:
When Rose describes her father's lack of knowledge about children, she writes, "We grew tall on our own without proof." (22)
After tasting the emotions of the many people involved in the making of the school cafeteria's lunch, she "put my head on the desk. I didn't intend to do it; it was like someone had attached a magnet to my forehead and then tucked another inside my notebook. That was where my head had to go." (27)
[this one's my favorite] - "I could feel the tears beginning to collect in my throat again, but I pushed them apart . . . Tears are only a threat in groups." (29)

Rose's "special skill" of tasting the emotions of the cook cause her great distress and dismay and as she describes that feeling her mother's hidden emotions, it was " . . . like reading her diary against my will" she cannot prevent herself from feeling those feelings that others do not acknowledge.
That feeling of invading people's private worlds permeates Rose's life. It takes her years to get used to or at least live with but she does learn to accept herself and her special skill. She finds her own peace inside the havoc of others' emotions.
Joseph's special skill is harder to wrap my head around. I found myself rereading passages about him and not quite getting what the author intended. However, that did not stop me from caring about Joseph. As Rose is confused, so am I. I decided that was the point and let him be.

I have recommended this book to many people already, even before I completed the first read through. I fell so in love with her use of language that I have added Ms. Bender;s other writings to my list of reading.

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LibraryThing member kayceel

The first time Rose realizes she can taste in the food she eats the feelings of the cook, it's a lemon cake steeped in her mother's feelings of loneliness and despair. At eight (or nine?), this is an awful realization, and Rose spends a good portion of the next 10 (and then some) years trying to

avoid food ruined by the cooks' emotions.

I found this fascinating and not a little heartbreaking. Rose's family is one in quiet trouble, as her mother pretends to be happy and content on the outside, but funnels her hidden depression into projects (and, eventually, an affair). Rose's father, an matter-of-fact, organized lawyer(? I actually got a clear idea of what he did for a living) is very contained with a secret of his own, and Rose's brother: well. Possibly autistic, definitely lacking in social skills, his bright mind and emotionally blank face is the star around which Rose's mother orbits to the detriment of everyone else in the family. And smack dab in the midst of this family is Rose, a young woman

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LibraryThing member jbrubacher

At 9 years old Rose discovers that while she eats a meal she can taste the unknown emotions of the person who made it. With too much information about her mother's sadness, and much too much information about every chef's personal issues and every farm's practices, she eats mostly junk food to

survive. Meanwhile her brother begins to vanish--actually vanish, as far as Rose can tell, though their parents think he's just run away--more and more as their lives go on.

This is a coming of age tale, and basically the story of a very empathetic little girl and her brother, who withdraws from the family, but given a surreal and almost supernatural edge that lets us explore the situation with more interest than usual. The whole family is peculiar (as families tend to be in fiction, and sometimes in real life) but here it's an inherited sense that we can understand but never fully share. Sometimes the language becomes too pretentious and flowery, but other times it settles into a clarity that really suits the complexity of what it's trying to express.

I ended up enjoying the book a lot, particularly the scene where Rose finally eats her own cooking. Altogether it was beautiful and sad and hopeful. I can see why some people would find it over the top, but I liked the balance of the mundane with the strange, and I thought it worked.

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LibraryThing member whitreidtan

With a quirky title, a slice of cake on the cover, and a main character who can taste other people's emotions in the food they make, this is definitely a book that will intrigue a lot of people, especially those who read and enjoyed Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate so many years ago. Rose

is just a child when she can suddenly taste her mother's despair in the lemon cake she has baked that day. And it's not just her mother's feelings, she can now taste the emotions of anyone who has cooked anything she eats. This is such an unsettling gift that she starts relying solely on highly processed foods. While she can pinpoint the places that all the ingredients originated and the factory in which the food was produced, there's less human contact and therefore less disappointment, sorrow, and unhappiness for her to taste. Rose's new and unusual talent highlights the dysfunction, secrets, and unhappiness surrounding her family and as she grows up, the quiet desperation continues to run through their lives singly and as a family.

This melancholic novel seems to inspire reviews from both ends of the spectrum, love it and hate it. I didn't love it but I liked it fine up until the end, at which point I wanted to throw it across the room. So I guess my reaction encompasses both reactions all in one. I guess I can only stretch credulity so far before I snap and the resolution with Rose's brother Joseph took me one step too far. The tone of the book was definitely depressing and the characters practiced avoidance far more frequently than they made any meaningful connection with each other. And only Rose, when she could bring herself to eat their food, could tell at all what was in each person's heart and head. The constant strivings of quiet desperation could be a tad overwhelming at times, the pacing of the book was uneven, and the plot was a bit thin. Overall, given my final impression, I was disappointed but there is definitely much food for thought included here amongst the dysfunction.

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LibraryThing member ThePortPorts

Maybe it was just the right book at the right time. Maybe it touched a spot in my that likes 5-star reviews. But yes: five stars.

This was the right time for me to read this book. Life is a bit frenzied right now, so my brain is in too high a gear for too much of the day. Along comes Aimee Bender to

give me a tale that is fascinating and thought provoking... AND easy to read. What a joy to just sink into this book.

Rosie, the book's narrator, has a complicated problem. The book is told in her voice, and I enjoyed her a lot. I also enjoyed the rest of her family: complex people, all caught up in problems of their own. Joseph was the most astounding. While Rose tells the story, really, I think this book is about Joseph. We don't get solid confirmation on what is up with Joseph, but we get enough to foster intrigue.

So. Good book. I've read a set of her short stories, Willful Creatures, and I'll be picking up more of her writings soon.

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LibraryThing member CMash

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Published by Doubleday
ISBN 978-0-385-50112-5
At the request of Doubleday, a HC was sent, at no cost to me, for my honest opinion.
Synopsis (from book's 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 tat 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.
My Thoughts and Opinion: Before I started reading this book, I had read reviews from one end of the spectrum to the other. I went into it with an open mind and high hopes that I would enjoy it. Instead, I found myself not wanting to pick it up and continue reading. I thought it was me and I was experiencing a reading slump. But I forced myself to contine reading and it wasn't a slump, it was the book. The following is my opinion and my opinion only. Others may disagree. I had read 100+ pages and can honestly say, I did not like anything about the book, the premise of the story line, the author's writing style nor the characters. In all my years of reading, I have never seen this type of writing, there was not one quotation mark in the 100+ pages I read and it was elementary at best. I try to find at least some positive aspects of a novel, even those that I simply can't push through, but couldn't with this one. I had to put this book aside and move on.
My Rating: 1

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LibraryThing member beccabgood1

A coming-of-age story, but so much more. This novel has everything: it's beautiful, poetic, sad, sweet, wise, and impossible to put down. It's larger than any label or category.

There are two things that are most important for my high rating of this novel. First, Bender does an amazing job of

describing a mildly dysfunctional (but also extraordinary) family and the pain and loneliness felt by each member as they try to cope with the weakness at the core of their lives. Rose is nine when she discovers that she can taste the feelings of whoever was involved in producing the food she eats (including the cattle and chickens). This ability gives her insights into those around her which she's way too young to handle. Bender’s depiction of her reactions, and the family dynamic, are incredibly realistic, but also filled with compassion. It’s a joy to watch Rose mature, coming to accept her family for who they are, learning to live with the life she’s been given and slowly finding her own path to happiness.

It’s also an amazing experience to read this novel. I said it’s poetic, because after finishing, I felt the way I do after reading a wonderful poem for the first time: that sense of light, and open-ness; of discovery and wonder. The writing is beautiful: precise and accurate, with sudden stabbingly sharp insights. I gobbled up Lemon Cake as fast as I could, and I can’t wait for the Aimee Bender’s next recipe.

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LibraryThing member jenreidreads

I really enjoyed the first half - maybe even two-thirds - of this novel. But then it took a weird, dark, turn, and totally lost me. I didn't love the ending.

LibraryThing member bookappeal

Hmm. I'm giving this book 4 stars but it's hard to explain why. The lack of quotation marks (and dialogue that can only be described as stilted) had the effect of making the characters somewhat remote. But I did feel for Rose (and sweet George!) and wanted to find out where the story was going. Not

sure I ever did! Recommended only for readers who do not rely on resolved endings or straight-line plots, or realistic events. However, recommended for readers who like creative writing style and storyline and unusual characters. I have no idea what the author was trying to convey with this book but I enjoyed reading it.

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