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A review by eileen_daly_boas
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
5.0
No spoilers.
The blurb: This is magical realism at its best. If you ever liked the Twilight Zone episodes that dealt with the inner life of people, then you will enjoy this book. Some lines of prose are very delicate and yet sturdy...they hold their own weight. If you ever wanted a mash-up between Anne of Green Gables and Ready Player One, you would like this.
The slightly longer version:
Aimee Bender's book is part sci-fi/magical realism/coming of age/mystery novel all packed into one. It would certainly collapse upon itself except for the absolutely wonderful moments of prose that you find like a swirl of fudge ripple in a good scoop of vanilla ice cream. The main character, Rose, discovers the ability to taste the emotions of the person who prepares her food. Family, strangers, you name it. We follow how she copes with this ability while also doing the usual growing up that children do. A mystery develops, secrets are kept and discovered, a girl grows into a woman. Bender is really adept at capturing if not the actual thoughts of 9-12-17 year olds, she captures how they believe they are thinking. The internal voice that's older and yet still 9 or 12 or 17.
What I thought at first would be a "regular chick lit" kind of novel kept getting more and more interesting. Less predictable, despite the fact that a young girl coming-of-age is always predictable in many ways. The story balances absolute predictability of one element with a wonderful challenging element of true storytelling, where you hang on for the next word and the next chapter.
I listened to the audio version, read by the author. At first, I'd have said the reading was a little dry, not much on emotion, and that was a bit distancing. But as I got further along, I came to like it. I can imagine it being a very different experience with a reader who sounded more like a teenager/very young woman. The distancing was actually a good choice...there's much out of the reader's reach at times. There's no artificial closeness here. (After reading some reviews, it seems that the dialogue in the print version was very hard to read...so perhaps I got lucky, as there's no confusion in the audiobook)
If you're looking for predictable chick lit, or if you find magical/science-fiction elements incompatible with it, then skip this one. If you want a book that's not like all the others and has moments of absolutely stunning language, with sentences you want to hear repeated just for their beauty, then this is a great choice. If you've got a geek girl in your life, buy her this. I know I've got a few friends who will devour it and savor it, and find it satisfying.
The blurb: This is magical realism at its best. If you ever liked the Twilight Zone episodes that dealt with the inner life of people, then you will enjoy this book. Some lines of prose are very delicate and yet sturdy...they hold their own weight. If you ever wanted a mash-up between Anne of Green Gables and Ready Player One, you would like this.
The slightly longer version:
Aimee Bender's book is part sci-fi/magical realism/coming of age/mystery novel all packed into one. It would certainly collapse upon itself except for the absolutely wonderful moments of prose that you find like a swirl of fudge ripple in a good scoop of vanilla ice cream. The main character, Rose, discovers the ability to taste the emotions of the person who prepares her food. Family, strangers, you name it. We follow how she copes with this ability while also doing the usual growing up that children do. A mystery develops, secrets are kept and discovered, a girl grows into a woman. Bender is really adept at capturing if not the actual thoughts of 9-12-17 year olds, she captures how they believe they are thinking. The internal voice that's older and yet still 9 or 12 or 17.
What I thought at first would be a "regular chick lit" kind of novel kept getting more and more interesting. Less predictable, despite the fact that a young girl coming-of-age is always predictable in many ways. The story balances absolute predictability of one element with a wonderful challenging element of true storytelling, where you hang on for the next word and the next chapter.
I listened to the audio version, read by the author. At first, I'd have said the reading was a little dry, not much on emotion, and that was a bit distancing. But as I got further along, I came to like it. I can imagine it being a very different experience with a reader who sounded more like a teenager/very young woman. The distancing was actually a good choice...there's much out of the reader's reach at times. There's no artificial closeness here. (After reading some reviews, it seems that the dialogue in the print version was very hard to read...so perhaps I got lucky, as there's no confusion in the audiobook)
If you're looking for predictable chick lit, or if you find magical/science-fiction elements incompatible with it, then skip this one. If you want a book that's not like all the others and has moments of absolutely stunning language, with sentences you want to hear repeated just for their beauty, then this is a great choice. If you've got a geek girl in your life, buy her this. I know I've got a few friends who will devour it and savor it, and find it satisfying.