The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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 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 show more 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

No closure. This book gives you no closure.

But it does give you an experience. If you are willing to suspend your disbelief and your critical voice, if you are willing to jump in and take the ride, in return Aimee Bender gives you the experience of being the emotionally neglected child in a family of individuals too consumed with their own problems.

See, Rose has little interior emotional life she can tell the reader. She has little interior emotional life she can tell herself. And no one in her family is listening– much less knows how to teach her to navigate her own emotions. Or life, for that matter.

So when she starts being able to taste the feelings of those who make her food, whether her mom in the family kitchen or the individual show more in a far away factory, she's in real trouble. This skill/gift/talent/curse would be nearly unnavigable for a child in a supportive family; it would be confusing and overwhelming for an adult with some sense of self.

But for the younger child of a family who already has a child who has extra needs, and for parents who themselves cannot navigate their own lives separately or together, tasting the emotions of others in your food means you are utterly screwed.

It's not in a "Like Water for Chocolate" way: the romance of food, and the enjoyment of life even when it's horrible.

It's more in the line of my-food-is-trying-to-kill-me.

And following the story of what a person has to do to herself to survive under those circumstances isn't done with a narrator with a full, functional voice. It's done in the voice of someone who has hollowed herself out, stripped away parts of herself so she can perhaps survive. The amount of heartbreak in this book is not for the faint of heart: by the last few scenes I was sobbing so hard I thought I would throw up. A feel-good book this isn't; no redeeming Nick Hornby moments here. Bender has written in such a masterful way that she creates the hollowed-out, desperate, needy feelings in this reader as in her protagonist.

I was willing to take the ride: by the third or so chapter I recognized something true about it, as the younger child of an extra needs sibling. Once I waded into it, which was pretty slow going to be honest, I couldn't stop reading. I was drawn from chapter to chapter with Bender's promise of filling that hollowness or neediness with Something. Anything. Please! God! It reminded me of Wind-Up Bird Chronicles (Murakami) in this way, pulling me from chapter to chapter as I sought to resolve the same hollowness and confusion in me-as-reader as in the protagonist.

It's a promise she never fulfills and a hollowness never filled. It's never filled for Rose, either. show less

I finished reading The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake several weeks ago and have been putting off writing this review since then because I struggled to organize my thoughts about this mysterious little book into coherent sentences. I cannot say that my thoughts are any more cogent now than they were last week, but I can put off writing this review no longer. So, here I go. Reader, you have been warned.

My first impression upon finishing this book was an explicative-laced rant, in my mind of course, on how weird the story is and how it ends on such a down note and why-oh-why did this win any recognition of any sort by anyone because HOLY SHIT this book is just bizarre. Then I started thinking that this reaction is exactly the point, show more which then evolved into the thought that my reaction is indicative of something else but just what was still alluding me. Then I waffled back to the initial reaction of just how strange the story is. Then, I drooled over the front cover because cake. Except, who makes a lemon cake with chocolate frosting? That cake looks gorgeously tasty though, so I am going to pretend that it is a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Now I want cake. But wait…chocolate and lemon. There is something there. I almost have it…

All of that insight into my thought process over the past few weeks is just one clue that The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is not a novel you can take at face value, nor is it a novel for passive readers. It requires…no, it demands reflection and interpretation. There is nothing light and easy about Rose’s story, even though the cover as well as the synopsis make it feel like a whimsical one. Yet, as disappointing as this all is, the fact that it is not a light-hearted novel is okay because the one thing you take away from the story is empathy.

Here is what I realized as I tried to make sense of Rose’s “gift” and that of her brother’s. Focus less on the gifts themselves and more on what they represent. Their representation is best seen through Joseph, Rose’s aloof brother who would rather be alone than socialize with anyone. It is painful for me to admit that even though I recognized that Joseph would probably register on the Autism spectrum, I lost sight of that fact as his special talents became more of Rose’s focus even though the two are directly related. Again however, this is exactly the point of the story as I see it. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake takes a difficult subject and makes it more palatable by wrapping it up as a special gift that certain family members have. Only then does the subject lose its subjectivity and stigma.

In that context then The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake becomes something entirely different. Instead of me wanting to toss it across the room as garbage, I recognize the brilliance in Ms. Bender’s accomplishments within her novel. It allows readers to put themselves into Rose’s and her family’s shoes to experience how torturous “normal” life can be for someone whose brain is wired a bit differently from everyone else. We no longer have to imagine the problems even the most basic act like eating can pose for people because Ms. Bender makes the reader Rose. We experience what she experiences and are with her as she desperately tries to find ways to survive without losing her mind to the sensory overload each bite of food can bring. It is a spectacular use of magical realism as it gives you the gift of empathy for your fellow man.

This is not to say that The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a perfect story, for it is not. There are some continuity issues with Rose’s gift that will cause some consternation. There is also a considerable lack of quotation marks to denote dialogue. For those who like their dialogue with appropriate punctuation, this could be a deal-breaker.

However, for me, these were minor issues that in no way diminish the effectiveness of the story itself. After stewing on it for so long, I walk away from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake with a sense of wonder at the emotions Ms. Bender was able to evoke and marvel at her ability to write a novel that is not easy to ignore. For, while it would have been far easier for me to write a short review after I finished it detailing how the story is garbage, I could not do so. Instead, there was that niggling sense I was missing something that prevented me from taking the easy way. The reward is worth the wait, as my appreciation for this quirky but ultimately quite sad story has grown tenfold now that I understand its importance. show less

“his eyes would slide over and attach to the words, as if they could not do anything but roam and float in the air until words and numbers anchored them back to our world”

This exceptional piece of imagination renders the Edelstein family in Californian suburbia, apparently entirely typical. Until Rose bites into her ninth birthday cake a day early, and tastes the emotions of its creator – the despair of her mother. Food becomes dangerous as Rose suffers enforced empathy through her talented palate. She discovers her mother’s secret, struggles with her father’s detachment and puzzles over her brother’s emotional and occasionally physical absence.

One line on the blurb encapsulates the novel perfectly: “The Particular Sadness show more of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the heartbreak of loving those whom you know too much about.” (although the grammar nerd in me is having issues with that preposizione abbandonata there at the end!)

The tale itself progresses easily enough, with the bulk of the action when Rose is between the ages of nine and twelve – young enough to be overwhelmed, old enough to be devious. Her family is not unusual; her older brother is the pride of both her parents, who are utterly convinced of his precociousness, while Rose potters along in the background of their awareness. The father is emotionally rather absent and Rose describes this nicely through the suggestion that he has a list of father-daughter activities and is happy to carry these out, but is unaware of how to be a good father in any other aspect of life.

The mother whose despair is so cruelly present in Rose’s birthday cake is described as by an adult looking back – we sense Rose’s adoration of her mother, particularly her admiration of the maternal culinary skills, but she is fairly cynical regarding her mother’s hobbies and pastimes, expecting the enthusiasm for carpentry to wane within a few months, the way every other enthusiasm has done.

Bender maintains the magical realism impeccably throughout, examining Rose’s life at school, condemned to buying prepackaged junk food and being jealous of other families’ happiness she can taste through shared sandwiches in the playground. Neither Rose’s family nor friends can understand her affliction, so Rose is forced into silence apart from near the few people in whom she can confide.

I was very impressed by this – it is not a heavy book, but combines a startlingly clever idea and beautiful writing very elegantly. Rather like a good cake. I can’t fault the book, but I don’t feel that it deserves 10/10 – it failed to grab me the way The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet did. Perhaps my slight apathy is because while I was interested in what happened to Rose and her family, I didn’t identify with any of them. show less