(#61) Book Review: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

When Rose Edelstein takes a bite of her mother’s lemon-chocolate cake and can taste her mother’s emotions, she realizes that she has some sort of gift.  At nine, it’s difficult for her to articulate, and it isn’t long before Rose realizes that she’s privy to all sorts of secrets that she wish she weren’t: her mother’s wandering attention, her father’s distance from the family, her brother’s tendency to disappear.  As she grows up, Rose learns to live with her strange ability and struggles to reconcile the fact that being able to taste emotions doesn’t mean that she understands every single secret.

Aimee Bender’s novel has a lot of potential, but unfortunately the execution doesn’t quite match what was promised.  Strong writing and an interesting premise can’t save this novel from meandering from event to event before eventually fizzling out.  Surrealist in tone, this is not a novel for every reader.  Bender’s light, almost callous tone will turn some readers off, while others will struggle with the increasingly absurdist nature of the story.

What works best in Bender’s novel are the descriptions of the foods that Rose eats as she discovers her ability to taste emotions.  She can trace a food’s history through its texture and ingredients: she can tell if the person who picked the vegetables was angry or kind and can tell if the cook was sad, rushed, or madly in love.  As she explores the nuances in the foods she eats, she also uncovers secrets about the people around her.  This is most fully explored in the case of her mother, whose loneliness and unhappiness actually sends Rose into convulsions at one point.

The problem is that Bender’s novel seems to lose focus early on.  Instead of focusing on Rose’s ability as she grows older, Bender explores the increasingly odd disappearances of Rose’s older brother.  She also hints at Rose’s mother’s affair, but this is never fully examined.  It is here that the novel seems to lose all of its focus and all of its momentum.  Instead of allowing her characters to propel the plot forward, Bender seems content to allow them to stay still, which makes the story stagnate.

Problems with plotting and pacing aside, there’s no denying that Bender is a very good writer.  Those who want to revel in the language will find plenty of opportunities to do so.  Those who cannot swallow a book with a predominantly surrealist plot, though, should probably look elsewhere.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. Doubleday: 2009.  Library copy.

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