The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
by Aimee Bender
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake Book Club Discussion Questions available!
Publication date/ Length: 2010 / 292 pages 
Synopsis (from the jacket cover): 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.
First line: “It happened for the first time on a Tuesday afternoon, a warm spring day in the flatlands near Hollywood, a light breeze moving east from the ocean and stirring the black-eyed pansy petals newly planted in our flower boxes.”
Review: I’ve now been reviewing books long enough that I know when a novel appears on multiple lists, the author either has a story that resonates with many readers, or simply has a great publicist. So, I was mostly excited when Cake arrived from the library, but kept my expectations reasonable, too.
Well, Bender falls into the first category. Cake is certainly one of the quirkier and most original works I’ve read in a long time. The heroine discovers at the age of nine that she can taste the emotional state of whomever created the food she eats. Interesting premise, huh? This idea could go so many different directions, too… But the title was quite apt for this novel, since the predominant emotions Rose tastes are troubled and therefore burdensome for a nine-year-old girl. In addition, Rose is not the only “gifted” member of her family and her brother’s saga is just as unusual — and disturbing — as Rose’s.
Beyond the engaging premise, Bender has a lovely, lyrical bent to her language, too:
I could absolutely taste the chocolate, but in drifts and traces, in an unfurling, or an opening, it seemed that my mouth was also filling with the taste of smallness, the sensation of shrinking, or upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my mother, tasting a crowded sense of her thinking, a spiral, like I could almost even taste the grit in her jaw that had created the headache that meant she had to take as many aspirins as were necessary, a white dotted line of them in a row on the nightstand like an ellipsis to her comment: I’m just going to lie down… None of it was a bad taste, so much, but there was a kind of lack of wholeness to the flavors that made it taste hollow, like the lemon and chocolate were just surrounding a hollowness
Rose’s pervasive loneliness really saturates the pages of this novel, and while I am quite glad I read the novel — and believe it would be a good choice for a book club — I was also glad to return to my “normal” life once I turned the last page…
If you think your book club might be interested, I have written The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake Book Club Discussion Questions, too!
I’ve been seeing this book around, but hadn’t clicked through to any reviews until I saw you’d reviewed it. Sounds like a great book! I’ll definitely be recommending it to my book club.
I loved this one for some reason; well done.
Sounds like a book I might want to read! I’m in the mood for “quirky”. And short. I’ve just finished a long and serious book.
This book sounds like a fun read, and I would really enjoy it. Please enter me. Thanks!
Sounds interesting. I’ll also mention it to my book club and, if that fails, I’ll read it on my own. Thanks for the review!
Thank you for your comments!! I couldn’t resist finding out if this novel lived up to the hype — and I think it did!
FYI, Anita, I do not give-away the books I review on Sundays… These are my reviews of library books!
This is a book I plan to bring up to the library book group I organize. We begin our 13th year this September. I haven’t yet had a chance yet to read it–but love Aimee Bender! I Have recommended it to patrons.
Also, the subject matter reminds me of something Alice Hoffman–another favorite–might write.
Thank you for developing discussion questions.
Hi Margot — I need to try Bender’s other works! I’m glad you are going to recommend Lemon Cake — I think it would spark great discussion!
I must say, a book has never made me so SAD I could not finish it. I now know what depression feels like. I won’t recommend to my book club.