Review: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by aimee bender

This Review Contains Minor Spoilers.

When I found The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender at the local thrift store here in West Covina, I never imagined it would become a novel I'd recommend to friends for a good read. I was drawn in by the colorful turquoise and sunshine yellow cover, adorned with a slice of lemon cake layered with chocolate frosting and a single blown out candle. Little did I know that it would be more than a book about a slice of cake, but about the difficulty of loving someone when you know too much.

Our main character is Rose Edelstein, who, on the eve of her ninth birthday, secretly bites into her mother’s homemade lemon cake and unintentionally unlocks a gift that allows her to taste the emotions of her mother in the cake. Soon enough Rose finds that her bubbly, happy mother tastes hollow and unhappy. Roses character develops throughout the novel, evolving from a scared girl hiding everybody’s secrets to a young woman destined to help others.

Early on, Rose is faced with the horror that her mother tastes of the emotions of distress, Rose attempts to talk to her mother about it only to be shutdown. If you were to tell the closest people that you knew that you could taste emotions, nobody would believe you, and evidently this is what happens to Rose when she tries to explain her mother's strange tasting cake. The only one who believes her is her older brother Joseph’s friend George and in the process, he becomes her only supporter. This gift soon becomes a curse when Rose finds out what the secret she tasted in her mothers lemon cake really is. Later on, she eats some roast beef and tastes the strongest feelings of desperation and romance. Unsure of the truth, Rose decides that her mother is having an affair. With hidden knowledge and her mother’s denial, Rose spirals down the hole of processed foods, determined to stop feeling the emotions of everyone around her.

Bender tells the tale of Rose through her quirky talent and her family as well. Each member has a small story blended in with Rose’s such as her brother Joseph, who often disappears and compares himself to an inanimate object. It’s his way of coping with his fear of people. Bender's way of expressing Rose’s uneasiness is to turn her lengthy explanations of the emotions into short answers associated with food. Much like her brother, Rose begins to hide away and keep to herself more, her mother's secret, and the depressing emotions she feels from tasting food is much to hard for her to handle. Rose develops a coping mechanism by telling George less about how the food tastes like, but its origin. Like how a quiche at a restaurant has eggs from Michigan. George is a small character, but fills the role of love interest and companion. Each character however, has one thing in common, and that all of them, because of the circumstances and challenges they find themselves in, draw further and further away from each other.

Aimee Bender creates a small story of a girl named Rose who finds terror in a villain called Food. Its human like qualities drawn from the cook himself. Although more than enough of the book is a twist and twirl of bittersweet wonder, Rose is able to find herself and others in a quick turn of the page. The only way to find out what happens to Rose and her magical secret is to read ‘The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake’ by the talented Aimee Bender.