The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Author: Aimee Bender
Recommended Age: Young Adult/ Adult
Publisher: Doubleday
ISBN-10: 0385501129
ISBN-13: 978-0385501125
Year Published: 2010
No. Pages: 304
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Main Character Gender: Female
Read & Reviewed by: Chloe



A few days before her ninth birthday, Rose finds her favorite lemon cake not only tasting sugary sweet, but also tasting of despair and desperation. She soon realizes she has the gift to taste people’s emotions in the food they make; only it's really a devastating curse.

The simple task of eating becomes fraught with dread. She has great trouble seeing (or tasting) past the unwelcome insight into the lives of whom she is closest. If the food isn't happy, she just simply can't eat it. Forced to eat out of the snack machine in her school, she can't avoid eating the dinner her depressed mother makes. Soon, through food, she learns many secrets but some secrets can't always be discovered with food.   

The characters in this novel essentially made the story because they lived off the page and were so unlike any other characters I’ve read about. Each one had their own quirks and oddities. Not only does Rose taste emotion but her brother has his own eccentric “ability” that is revealed slowly through the course of the novel. This “ability” is unbelievable and shocking but somehow fits with the storyline.  It is evident that Rose cares about her brother but has difficulty relating to him. Her brother's best and only friend, George is the link between the two siblings initially and through George, Rose is able to piece together her “ability” and understand her brother more.

By the time Rose is a high school graduate, she can tell the exact geographical origin of the ingredients in the food she eats — the quiche in a French cafe, for instance, has eggs from Michigan, cream from Nevada, milk from Fresno, bacon from an organic farm in Northern California, and parsley from San Diego. Bender ensures that Rose develops her “ability” as well as the way in which she navigates her life with this gift. This gift does not make her a superhero, rather, it is a curse that forces her to be more secluded.

Bender writes in first person, but because of the book's peculiar story and Rose’s insight into the other character’s emotions, we have a way of discovering what is happening in the other characters’ lives. This gives the characters more dimension and it is an added facet to the narrative.

Bender never writes dialogue with quotation marks which was challenging at first but the story itself flows so well that I still understood it without any difficulty. In fact, it even seemed to help the book move along more quickly.

I rated this book a 10 out of 10. I recommend it to anyone who likes a book that gives a new perspective, is quirky, has humor and a mystery that will force you to keep reading until you come to the jaw-dropping conclusion.