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Loading... The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (original 2010; edition 2011)by Aimee Bender (Author)
Work detailsThe Particular Sadness Of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (2010)
  
Amusing Book Titles (18) Magic Realism (118) » 11 more No current Talk conversations about this book.  rebcamuse | Feb 6, 2021 |  Hmm...well, that was weird. Creative story, but I just couldn't empathize with the characters. (  ) pmichaud | Dec 21, 2020 | It was a good read, but it ended rather abruptly. (  ) HillaryFredrick | Nov 4, 2020 | An enjoyable read with a unique storyline about a girl who could feel emotions in the food she ate. If half stars were available I'd give it 3.5. ( ) baruthcook | Aug 26, 2020 | This was the book I chose to read for the reading challenge: 'a book judged by its cover'. Judging from the cover, I was assuming chicklit-like light reading, just something to make me happy and kill some time on. Boy was I ever wrong. There's a lot of clichés in this that make the overall taste (eheh) a bit bland, but the main premise of the story is fascinating. Despite the rather glum outlook on life most characters seem to have, the main character gets to a place where she is -I think- happy. It leaves you a bit hopeful, although only a bit. Interesting family relations, too! I think that those are, in the end, the main focus of the book. I might just pick it up again after this year. It's definitely an easy read, but takes you away nevertheless! (  ) stormnyk | Aug 6, 2020 |
 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. 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.
Being able to taste people's emotions in food may at first be horrifying. But young, unassuming Rose Edelstein grows up learning to harness her gift as she becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern. No library descriptions found. |
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Wikipedia in English
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It can be read as a quirky surrealist tale, but I think that misses the important layer and the lessons about our human-ness. In any group of people, we can almost count on someone who tastes the nuances of life, someone who lives a life of avoidance in fear of the unknown, and those who wish to blend in with the scenery. They are all there, and Bender reminds us of our own potential to taste, to avoid, and to be absorbed. (