30 Books in 30 Beach Days Day 6: "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake"
- bostonbookworm22
- Jul 25, 2017
- 2 min read
I had been curious about Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake since it came out a few years ago—mainly because of the mouth-watering image on the book’s cover.
I regularly dismiss the old adage about how to judge a book, because I often feel that the cover—if constructed well—can convey, in a single image, the feeling of the whole novel. This book’s cover image is of a toothsome, three-layer yellow cake separated by chocolate frosting, whose shadow is human-like, and which holds a single extinguished birthday candle from which smoke billows softly. It’s a masterful cover, evocative and sad—it instantly reminded me of every birthday cake from my childhood, and I wondered what, particularly, could be so sad about this beautiful dessert.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake falls firmly into the magical realism genre, with food as the main vehicle for that magic. The story begins on the eve of narrator Rose’s ninth birthday, as her mother is preparing a chocolate-frosted lemon cake for her. It is while eating this birthday cake that Rose discovers an ability that will last the rest of her lifetime: Rose can taste emotions in food, and the lemon cake that her mother baked for her birthday transmitted a deep, gnawing sadness that startles and stuns Rose.
The story follows Rose and her family over the years, as she hones her unwanted “skill” and attempts to preclude others from believing her to be crazy. Rose comes to understand the people in her life, particularly her mother, in ways they cannot fully understand themselves. Her ability gives her a window into their psyche that even they sometimes cannot access.
It’s an interesting concept, and it makes for light, relatively interesting reading. However, much like chocolate frosting on a lemon-based cake, there’s something about this story that, to me, doesn’t quite fit. The novel follows Rose throughout several years of her life, but her narration never changes in style or substance. I had a hard time believing her as a narrator, particularly in the early chapters of the book, because she sounded so distinctly adult. While this book was and is intriguing, in the end it left a funny taste in my mouth and didn’t quite—despite valiant effort—ring true.
Rating: 3/5
