In Aimee Bender’s novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, protagonist Rose Edelstein has a bizarre talent/burden. When biting into any food, homemade or in a factory, she can trace the emotions of those who created it. Her mother’s baked goods reveal more than she could ever know, and that is only the beginning. As a nine-year-old discovering this magical gift, she is initially overwhelmed with the detectable emotions emanating from all foods. In a particularly horrifying taste experience, she is rushed to the emergency room where she tells the doctors she wishes they would just go ahead and remove her mouth from her body. But, not every situation with Rose’s ability ends in tears.
Those whom she most closely studies are her own family members: a mother who shields insecurities with obsessive hobbies and too-tight hugs, a father somewhat trapped in routine, and the most interesting, a distant brother with a darkness that is slowly unwrapped as the novel moves forward.
Bender’s prose is simplistic and clean; she rarely takes too much time describing an image, unless (interestingly) it is the season or the weather of that particular southern Californian day. This is not to say that her simplicity isn’t working; short, sometimes fragmented sentences without quotation marks are often telling. Not spending too much time in scenes is very true to the protagonist herself. Rose is young and watchful, and never in a way that rings false.
The pace of the novel varies, at times dramatically. In the beginning, the characters are so clean and cookie-cutter, it is borderline uninteresting. The reader almost begs to jump right into the magical realism the back’s description promises: Yes, we know they are normal and we will learn more later about their wackiness, just tell us already!
When Bender finally does reward us with this element, the pace of the story picks up in a huge way. Almost instantly, the reader finds themselves smiling with Rose, worrying for her, and deeply getting to know all of the other characters throughout the book, no matter how small their role is.
There is a moment when Rose hits high school that feels rushed again, where details are rattled off to exemplify that she has grown up, but once again when the magic comes back into the plot line, the story becomes enthralling.
This is not to say that the book is never unenjoyable, but like Rose’s life, sometimes the reader gains extreme clarity of the world that is being described, and at others, it feels a little more vague.
The best part of this novel is that, like its title promises, there is a twinge of sadness revealed in almost every character in the novel. It doesn’t feel forced or heart-wrenching; you won’t need your tissue box too much. It is nice to see an author approach her characters in such an honest, real way all while sprinkling magical elements throughout the plotline.
Make sure to look out for Bender when she visits Portland during the Wordstock festival in October, she seems to be someone that readers and writers alike can learn from.