Aimee Bender

A train read, I did not expect this book to be what it was, but I liked it very much, if that is a word that can be applied to this sad and beautiful tale. This is a beautifully drawn pen portrait of an eclectic neurospicy family and the ways in which perfectly normal lives can be unbearably sad, all in a clever magical realism setting where Rose has to live with the feelings of everyone around her because she can taste them in her food.

يحدث أن تغير بعض الأيام حياتنا إلى الأبد، لكن أن تغير قضمة من كعكة حياتنا هذا ما لم أسمع به من قبل!

الكتاب الذي يروي هذه القصة من تأليف الكاتبة آيمي بيندر، عبرت مصادفة برفوف الكتب ووجدت صورة روز طفلة التاسعة على الغلاف تنظر بأسى باتجاه قطعة كعك الليمون المزينة بالشوكولا!

في show more المختصر رواية The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake تحكي أن روز تكتشف في عيدها التاسع وبعد تناولها لقطعة الكعك بأنها ليست قادرة على تذوق المكونات المادية للطعام وحسب، بل تذهب لأبعد من ذلك وتتذوق مشاعر الطاهي.

هذه الهبة تارة - واللعنة تارة أخرى - تصبح سمة لحياة روز، وفي كل مرة تأخذ قضمة من أي طبق مطهو من قبل البشر تلاحقها المشاعر المتذوقة ولا تتركها تستريح.

بدأ الأمر في ظهيرة ثلاثاء ربيعية، حينما تسللت روز وأخذت قطعة من الكعكة التي أمضت والدتها الكثير من الساعات والتجارب للتوصل لضبط وصفتها «السحرية»، تتذوق الطفلة خواء والدتها وحزنها، وأشياء أخرى تخيفها من طعام المنزل.

وأصبحت تستعيض عنه بالأكل من أجهزة الوجبات السريعة المعلبة مثل رقائق البطاطا والحلويات الغارقة في السكّر، والسبب كما تروي لنا بلسانها أنها من إعداد مكائن المصانع، وليست من صنع البشر، وأنها بهذا الاختيار ستتجنب انتقال مشاعر الآخرين لمريئها ومعدتها.

روز تنتمي لأسرة أمريكية من الطبقة المتوسطة، والدها يعمل في شركة محاماة، والدتها تتعثر بين عدة أعمال لكنها تجد ضالتها في محل للنجارة. أخوها الوحيد جوزف منطوٍ على نفسه، يسمونه «العبقري»، وهو بلا أصدقاء، ما عدا صديقا وحيدا يزوره ويغرقان في حلّ المسائل ورسم الأكوان.

وبين أفراد عائلتها الصامتة في أغلب الأحيان، وبين مأساتها الشخصية التي لا تصدق بسهولة تروي لنا روز أحداث يومها بلغة طفولية محببة، وهذا ما جعلني أنجذب لإكمال قراءة فصول الكتاب.

فالكاتبة آيمي نجحت في استخدام تلك النبرة الطفولية التي تصف مشاعر روز، ونجحت أيضاً في إقناع القارئ من أن عارضاً صحياً كهذا يمكن القبول به وتصديقه!

في أحد فصول الكتاب تلتهم روز شطيرة لحم وخضراوات، وتستعيد مع المضغ مشاعر العمال، وهم يحصدون الخسّ، ملل تقول لنفسها، وتخمّن مصدر اللحوم: شرقيّ الولايات المتحدة، ثم الجبنة وهكذا.

أعتقد أنني وإن طرحت تساؤلاً على الذين شاركوني قراءة الكتاب سأجد أنهم توقفوا لمرة أو أكثر لتذوق مشاعر طعامهم بعد مغامرة روز المدهشة.

وتذكروا أيضاً «نَفَس» الأكل كما يصف إخوتنا المصريين مهارة كلّ طاهية وقدرتها على ترك بصمتها على أطباقها.

آيمي بيندر استخدمت أدب الواقعية السحرية للكتابة في هذه الرواية، ويصعب في كثير من الأحيان الكتابة في هذه المدرسة، خصوصاً أن الخيال إذا ما بدا مفتعلاً فإنه يصبح منفراً للقارئ ويقضي على فرصة اكتمال جودة العمل.

لماذا نجحت؟

آيمي كتبت عن أسرة تعيش فوضى من المشاعر المستترة، لا أحد يجرؤ على الحديث عن ألمه والكل في فلكه الخاصّ وتمضي الأيام هكذا حتّى تطفو مشكلة روز على السطح وهي العنصر الخيالي الوحيد في كلّ ما يحدث.

هذه الأسرة التي تعاني سوء التواصل الفعال، وما يترتب عليه من مشاكل تلقي بظلالها على جو الحكاية العام وتغمرها في حزن يتجاوز كعكة الليمون!


http://www.aleqt.com/2011/05/14/article_537905.html show less

I just finished listening to this book read by the author. Sometimes listening to an author read their work is an exercise in agony. But Aimee Bender did a good job. Not as good as some pros, but an easy listen with emphases that a pro might miss. I read it because our County Library System Goodreads October challenge was to read a book about food. Other members of the group had read it for other challenges and I was intrigued by the title. It was an odd, but intriguing work. I'll never look show more at old fashioned brown folding chairs in the same way again.

Rose learns in an unfortunate way that she can taste the emotions felt by the people who prepare the food. She tastes the agony, the sorrow, the depression, and, too rarely, total joy. She develops a coping technique by eating food prepared almost exclusively by machine. A bite of mom's dinner, a bite of potato chip. Then one day her brother Joseph disappears. Later he reappears and won't explain where he was. And Rose is confronted with a new problem. Besides dealing with her most unusual eating disorder, her brother now disappears unexpectedly. Where does he go? Why does he come back looking worn out.

I found the book particularly intriguing because when I was younger, I could hear the music plants make. I could even identify some plants by their individual songs. My lawn was easily kept weed-free because I could hear the small weed plants before I could actually see them in the grass. One time I was walking across my lawn with a couple of friends. I suddenly dropped down and rooted out a weed about 2 inches high. My lawn I keep at 3 inches. "How did you see that?" one of my friends asked, startled. Ummmm. I told her it was a different color from the grass and a different texture because of the rounded leaves. I was glad she accepted that. How do you explain something like that? Now I could say "Have you ever read A Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake? Well, like Rose, I have a really odd talent." Sadly, with hearing loss across the many years, I can no longer hear them. But my heart and my soul remember the glorious symphony of all the plants together in a work of joy and glory. How often I wished I had the talent to write the music down. Rose brought the memory of the songs back; I've not thought of them in a long time. And to know, even if it's fiction, I'm not the only one.

Thank you Aimee. show less

As I walked through the bookstore, I glanced to my right and said to the Nerd, "'The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake?' That's a title that will make me pick up the book," fully expecting the second half of my statement to be, "And that's a description that will make me put the book back on the shelf." Imagine my surprise when that turned out to not be the case and I ended up walking out of the store with yet another book to add to my pile of to-reads.

The story opens with show more eight-almost-nine-year-old Rose, who takes a bite of the lemon cake her mother has baked for her (as a part of what can only be described as her mother's wanting to find herself) and realizes that she can taste her mother's emotions in the cake. Unfortunately, this new skill does not end with just her mother, so Rose finds herself able to taste the emotions of the makers as well as exactly from where all the ingredients come--down to where farms and factories are located.

She finds almost no one in whom she can confide--her mother shows obvious favoritism for her brother, her brother Joseph is potentially chronically depressed/chronically Asberger's, and her father is emotionally distant, playing the part of a doting father and husband rather than feeling it. The only person she finds who will listen and is interested is her brother's best (and only) friend George who is the same kind of genius science nerd as her brother, but with more warmth.

But even though he believes her, George isn't always there and Rose suffers through the years feeling, as far as I could tell, very little love in her life. Then she finds out, through the taste of dinner, that her mother has started having an affair at the woodworking co-op where she works (the only hobby/career that seems to have stuck past the initial stages). It's also about this time that he brother starts disappearing when he's supposed to be babysitting her. He never leaves for very long and there is a hint that these episodes might bring Joseph and Rose closer together.

Ultimately, unfortunately, however, they don't...which also seems to be a running theme throughout the book--nothing ever seems to be fully resolved. Rose's mother carries on a years-long affair, but there's never any explanation for why. Rose's father reveals that his father had a similar skill to Rose's and that his overwhelming fear of hospitals is because he thinks he might be able to "do something" if he was ever in one, but it's not explored beyond his refusal to go with Rose to the hospital to see what it could be--even though this would bring him closer to his daughter. We find out that Joseph's disappearing act is because he is somehow melding into the furniture and...

What? No, really. He melds into the furniture. That's the grand reveal of the book. He's a genius scientist and all his studies throughout the years have left him with a way to become furniture. When the disappearances first started popping up, I was excited that he might be time- or inter-dimensional travelling, but no. He becomes one with a card table folding chair.

So that was dissatisfying.

What bothers me the most about my dissatisfaction is that it was sneaky. When I first put down the book, I thought, "Wow. That was a good book. Lot to think about." Then, after sleeping and taking a shower, and continuing to think about it, I realized that while it had given me a lot to think about, it was mostly about what could have happened or what should have happened, not anything deeper. It lulled me in with a false sense of depth.

The book is written beautifully. I didn't want to put it down as I savored how each word was strung together, but in the end, the characters were mostly static and one-dimensional. Rose makes an attempt to change her life at the very end by starting a job as a dishwasher at her favorite restaurant and becoming an apprentice there, but then the last scene of the book switches back to her visiting Joseph in the hospital before he disappears for the final time. She asks him to meld into a certain chair if he's going to do it again, but we're given very little insight into her motivation for asking this.

It wasn't a bad book, per se, but I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone looking for much more than a quick read. show less