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jmcphers 's review for:
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
by Aimee Bender
Our story opens with young Rose sneaking a bite of her birthday cake and finding that it tastes like the emotions her mother was experiencing while baking it. They aren't happy emotions. You might call them sad, or even particularly sad. "Good," you, the reader, think. "Five pages in and the cover already makes sense. This book is a nice straightforward coming-of-age novel with a bent of magical realism, I'll bet! Onward ho!"
But if you think that, you're wrong. The book continues to take unexpected turns into the surreal. It sort of has to, really. I imagine that the tricky thing about writing a book with this kind of premise is that it doesn't itself make a story. It quickly becomes a fact of life in the world the author creates, a sort of backdrop on which the story itself must take place. Okay, so you're nine years old and you can taste the quiet desparation in the food prepared by almost everyone you know, so you start eating mostly factory-made food. .... Great. Now what?
The story that unfolds from there is actually quite interesting. I had to keep turning pages because Bender kept throwing curveballs. There's a coming of age story here, and a few parts of love stories. The book takes a decided turn for the eerie when it becomes much more about Joseph (Rose's brother) than Rose herself, although it is all written from Rose's perspective. If you don't like weird, or even if you don't like scary, it's probably best to steer clear of this one.
In the end I liked this book quite a lot. Not only is it imaginative, gripping, and beautifully unusual, it's also extremely well-written. Bender is a true artist with prose and you can nearly taste the emptiness in the cake or the grit of the factory when you read about Rose doing the same. The dialogue is short and contains unexpected jabs of wit. I stayed up way later than I should have finishing this book. It's a great read.
But if you think that, you're wrong. The book continues to take unexpected turns into the surreal. It sort of has to, really. I imagine that the tricky thing about writing a book with this kind of premise is that it doesn't itself make a story. It quickly becomes a fact of life in the world the author creates, a sort of backdrop on which the story itself must take place. Okay, so you're nine years old and you can taste the quiet desparation in the food prepared by almost everyone you know, so you start eating mostly factory-made food. .... Great. Now what?
The story that unfolds from there is actually quite interesting. I had to keep turning pages because Bender kept throwing curveballs. There's a coming of age story here, and a few parts of love stories. The book takes a decided turn for the eerie when it becomes much more about Joseph (Rose's brother) than Rose herself, although it is all written from Rose's perspective. If you don't like weird, or even if you don't like scary, it's probably best to steer clear of this one.
In the end I liked this book quite a lot. Not only is it imaginative, gripping, and beautifully unusual, it's also extremely well-written. Bender is a true artist with prose and you can nearly taste the emptiness in the cake or the grit of the factory when you read about Rose doing the same. The dialogue is short and contains unexpected jabs of wit. I stayed up way later than I should have finishing this book. It's a great read.