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 slice. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother - her cheerful, can-do mother - tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes perilous. Anything can be revealed at any meal.
Rose's gift forces her to confront the secret knowledge all families keep hidden - truths about her mother's life outside the home, her father's strange detachment and her brother's clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up, she realises there are some secrets that even her taste buds cannot discern.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the heartbreak of loving those whom you know too much about. It is profound and funny, wise and sad, and Aimee Bender's dazzling prose illuminates the strangeness of everyday life.
Rating: 3 Stars
Positives: This was a very unique book. I have never before seen a plot like this; where a nine year old girl can taste the emotions of other people in her food. Sometimes it can even be emotions that they aren't even aware of. So firstly points to Aimee Bender for coming up with such an original idea.
This was a fairly enjoyable read, and we can see just how hard life is for Rose. She never knows what curveball is going to be thrown at her with each meal.
The main focus of the story however seemed to be the mystery of her brother Joseph, and for the whole of the book I was eager to discover exactly what his gift was. He kept on disappearing after all, and he was such a withdrawn character that he sparked my interest. I had come up with my own theory, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was wrong and Bender had a much simpler explanation.
Negatives: The first thing that really really irked me about this book was the lack of quotation marks. There is no indicator of when someone is speaking, and it makes reading this book so much harder. I guess where the story starts from a nine year olds narrative, quotation marks could be easily forgotten, but to continue the whole way through the book was just driving me barmy.
Secondly its hinted at that Rose's father has a gift of his own, but we never really discover what it is. The only thing we do know is that it's related to hospitals. I'm not asking for a lot, I just think maybe it would be nice to discover what his special talent was.
Would I recommend this book? This was a fun, quirky read so yes I'd recommend it. However I would also recommend reading it slowly so you don't become confused over when s character is or isn't speaking.
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