The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel …..by Amiee Bender
‘The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse. On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother-her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother-tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.
The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden-her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern. ”
“It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad ” (San Francisco Chronicle).
“Odd and oddly beautiful….moving”–The Washington Post
“Haunting….Bender’s prose delivers electric shocks….rendering the world in fresh, unexpected jolts. Moving, fanciful and gorgeously strange”–People Magazine
“Charming and wistful….[Bender] harness[es] her exquisite, bizarre sensitivity, in this haunting examination”– The Atlantic
“The fairy-tale elements in her writing, far from seeming outlandish, highlight the everyday nature of her characters’ flaws and struggles. In Ms. Bender’s stories and novels, relationships and mundane activities take on mythic qualities.”–Wall Street Journal
“Dreamy….Playful prose….one of the most pleasant books we’ve read all year”–New York Observer
$15.17 Publisher: Doubleday; 1 edition (June 1, 2010) Amazon.com
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