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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake - Aimee Bender

★★★★
I loved it.  Love, love, loved it.  The narrator, a girl named Rose, can taste the emotions in food.  Any book that starts with an usual idea like will have to try hard to screw it up.  Aimee Bender does the opposite.  She turns it into a tremendous story, not just of Rose, but of her entire family.  Her brother and father, who have their own strange powers, her sort of love story with her brother's best friend, her mother's affair.  The central fantastical premise becomes a lens through which the story of an otherwise normal family is told.

The writing is lively, the characters are sympathetic, and the story moves at a pace fast enough to keep you interested.  I also like that you root for Rose, not because she's special, but because she's likable.  

One of my favorite parts of the book was when she discovers her ability, she performs a series of experiments to find out if what she's experiencing is real.  She tests foods.  She learns about the different flavors of individual foods (factory processed vs. farm grown) and about the feelings of the preparers.  It was a really interesting perspective.  It was almost like we have a first person limited narrator, but she gains a certain omniscience by her ability.  

Aimee Bender wrote some other books, and they're definitely on my reading list.

This book addresses the Foodie Challenge, and the 100+ Challenge.
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Comments

Jessica said…
This is the book I set aside for you but forgot to give you when you visited. I read it and enjoyed it well enough, but I had the sense while I was reading it that you would really love it. The brother parts bothered me, but I enjoyed the main character's relationship to that little restaurant towards the end of the book.
May 22, 2011 at 10:22 PM
Denise said…
Jessica, you know me so well. :)
May 22, 2011 at 11:01 PM
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