Name: Arihant Verma's review of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Item: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Rating: 3
Author: Arihant Verma

Aimee Bender

On the eve of her ninth birthday Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of her distracted parents' attention, bites into her mother's homemade lemon-chocolate cake and to her horror discovers that she can taste her mother's emotions in the slice. And her mother - her cheerful, can-do mother - tastes of despair and desperation.Suddenly food becomes perilous. Anything can be revealed by any meal - truths about her mother's life outside the home, her father's strange detachment and her brother's clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up, she realises there are some secrets that even her taste buds cannot discern.The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the heartbreak of loving those whom you know too much about. It is profound and funny, wise and sad, and it confirms Aimee Bender's place as a writer whose dazzling prose illuminates the strangeness of everyday life.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Leo Babauta

Discovering in childhood a supernatural ability to taste the emotions of others in their cooking, Rose Edelstein grows up to regard food as a curse when it reveals everyone's secret realities. By the Pushcart-winning author of An Invisible Sign of My Own.

A Novel

Arihant Verma

To start with the end, it took me by surprise. The climax wasn't expected. I was a little disappointed by it perhaps because the level of intrigue that the text before had managed to build in me was expecting something more magical.

I loved Aimee's language. Short sentences, and the fact that she didn't use quotation marks to define the dialogues of persons were like snippets of short surprises. 

In a few places I thought the story was going nowhere, because I felt those parts of the novel were unnecessary, because they didn't even were used to hide some obvious guess the reader might come up with ( it wasn't a crime novel).

The father of the protagonist seemed a bit too made up. He was as if controlled by her wife, taciturn. It wouldn't surprise me if what happens to the brother happened to him. It was very unreal his character.

But all in all I liked the idea of the whole magical thing. One time good read.

Sarah Sammis

Terribly boring. The writing is weak and fails to engage the reader in any way, and the premise ends up being infinitely more interesting than the story itself, as its execution was done lazily. The ending turns out to be surprising but not compelling: the reader may not anticipate it, but also does not become invested in it.

remiel

Laura Mauler

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.

Katherine Yang

Incredible. Borrowed this today because I was looking for something to while away time with, but once I started, I couldn't stop until I had reached the end. I wish I knew how to properly review books so I could give this the recognition it deserves. Otherwordly, subtle, thoughtful, and I'm pretty sure I don't even really understand most of what she's trying to get at but I love reading how she words it.

Jessica Ford

This was really kind of strange. The characters were all so sad. I wanted to like it so much more than I did. The premise was interesting, but I kept waiting for something to happen, and it never did. I don't know that I'd recommend this.

Jeannette Ordas

Lovely and sharp like the cake on the cover. I wasn't sure what I was getting into but I enjoyed the escape into Rose's world - her taste buds that tasted too much and her family that held too many secrets. It was a mystery that I wanted to savour a bit longer.

Amy Thibodeau

Beautifully written and a bit weird. Made me feel sad, sad, sad.

Phillip Santiago

I think I had a similar power as a teenager, but mine was the ability to listen to someone's Xanga playlist and know exactly how they were feeling.

Chiara Malaspina di Orezzoli

Non è un brutto libro.

E' vagamente insapore, però. Forse me lo sono immaginato a lungo, ho rimandato troppo il momento dell'acquisto rispetto a quando ho notato la copertina giallo-azzurra fra le tante altre finendo con alzare senza motivo le mie aspettative. 
Mi ha lasciato poco, quasi nulla.

On the eve of her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein 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. All at once her cheerful, can-do mother tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes perilous. Anything can be revealed at any meal. Rose's gift forces her to confront the truth behind her family's emotions - her mother's sadness, her father's detachment and her brother's clash with the world. But as Rose grows up, she learns that there are some secrets even her taste buds cannot discern. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is about the pain of loving those whom you know too much about, and the secrets that exist within every family. At once profound, funny, wise and sad, this is a novel to savour.

Brianna Santina

Absolutely wonderful. The magic Aimee Bender folds into everyday life is tremendous.

Discovering in childhood a supernatural ability to taste the emotions of others in their cooking, Rose Edelstein grows up to regard food as a curse when it reveals everyone's secret realities. By the Pushcart-winning author of An Invisible Sign of My Own. Reprint. A best-selling book.

Morgana

** spoiler alert **
           E' un libro un po' strano. Una parte mi è piaciuta molto, l'altra mi ha lasciata perplessa.
Joseph è un personaggio che non ho sopportato, genio incompreso, asociale fino all'estremo ( e fin qui fatti suoi ) ma non sembra provare niente per una famiglia che non lo ama, di più! Tratta la sorella come uno scarto, le risponde male, la ignora e non la vuole mai tra i piedi.
Lei invece è una protagonista interessante anche se sentire i sapori attraverso il cibo è assurdo e poi possibile che non ci sia nessuno felice? quello che cucina i biscotti ed è arrabbiato perché odia quel lavoro ed odia i biscotti ( è possibile odiare i biscotti con scaglie di cioccolato? mah ) la tipa che arriva in ritardo ed ha fretta, quella ansiosa, quella preoccupata e quella triste, una felice? non capita mai eh?
Comunque mi è piaciuto molto fino a metà, poi è andato via via peggiorando. I vari 'doni' che hanno lei, Joseph in nonno e forse il padre perché li hanno? come funzionano esattamente? ( perché giuro ho fatto veramente fatica a capire che cosa stava succedendo a Joseph con la sedia la prima volta che hanno descritto il fatto!) e da cosa derivano? Questo innesto di super-naturale così a caso non mi ha convinta molto.

Liv Rockwell

I have been wanting to read more magical realism novels to inform myself completely on the subgenre. This novel was listed on a Goodreads list, and thankfully my library had this novel on their shelves so I picked it up. 

This novel is good. I particularly love the idea of these different family members sensing emotions and feelings through their different senses, and this novel deals with these sensations as a way to discuss the different coping mechanisms people adopt to deal with emotions and others' emotions. 

The length of this novel was perfect. Too often I feel as if novels overextend their narrative as if to validate the authors' expertise rather than for the story's sake. However, this novel gets to the point and gets out, leaving the reader with many questions that should be left for the reader to consider: 

Is it better to be ignorant of others' emotions? What are the best ways of coping with emotion? Is one coping mechanism better than another? 

Very good. I would definitely recommend to people who love considering emotions and how they play into our everyday lives and relationships.

Laurel Ann Smith

Like nothing I've read before. I feel like I need to keep thinking about it for a while.

Olivera Mitić

Na papiru je ovde trebalo sve da mi se dopadne, a nije mi se dopalo ništa. Bar tako ispada. Više je magijski, nego realizam, više je o bratovljevom nestajanju nego o Rouzinom talentu da oseća tuđe emocije kroz hranu i više je nedovršeno nego što ima smislen kraj.

Alissa Kirchner

** spoiler alert **
           I really wanted to like this book, but it felt as if pieces were missing throughout. For a good portion of the book, I didn't have a good idea of when the book took place until email was mentioned. (Until that point, I had imagined the setting in the 1950s!) Rose's father was likable, but I felt that his character was underdeveloped. Was he clueless to the affair? Rose's reaction to her mother's affair was also, in my opinion, unrealistic. I cannot imagine feeling so unattached and nonchalant if one of my parents were having an affair (which I have experienced, and nonchalance was not something I felt). I enjoyed the premise of the book but thought it became strange with Joseph's turning into a chair. It was as if suddenly Rose is seeing his transformation into the chair and the author describes his obsession with the chairs that had never been previously mentioned. And why did he turn into a chair? I understand Rose's "talent" since her father revealed her grandfather's troubles, but Joseph's seems unrelated. I really liked George, and I was honestly surprised when he and Rose did not end up together. Overall, this book drew me in with its potential, but I feel that the execution, sadly, fell flat.

Christina

The particular sadness of this book! 

I loved it from start to finish - the gripping writing style, the intriguing plot line and its development, and, of course, all of the characters and their complexities. 

My first read of 2018, and I've already gotten off to a great start :)

Caitlin Berger

Started off pretty cool...didn't go anywhere too interesting, even when the main character discovers things. All in all, a very meh book.

Janet Doré

I'm going to be blunt...most of the time this book just flat out irritated me. It didn't call me from my nightstand to read it voraciously...it stared at me daring me to put it down. But, I was determined to finish it. It wasn't the writing style. It was a combination of utter frustration with the dysfunction of the characters and the total lack of action. I am not a shallow occasional reader...typically best sellers are not even my deal. But I am bored by books (classics or modern) where I am given nothing more than the musings of dysfunctional people. Give me something...and, don't make me wait until the last chapter to get it.

Michael Hessling

I can almost buy tasting feelings in food, but he turns into a fucking chair.

No.

Four stars because I loved Rose's character and how much she grew.

Leo Babauta &
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

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Leo Babauta &The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

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Leo Babauta &
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