Book Review: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Aimee Bender's novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a coming of age tale with a twist. Nine-year-old Rose, whose mother has made her favorite lemon cake for her birthday, bites into the cake and discovers that she can taste in food the emotions of the people who made it. She spends the next several years learning to avoid anger- or distress-laden foods, identifying the emotionless factories that make junk food, and making excuses not to eat her mother's cooking. While she struggles to navigate the feelings in food, she must also learn to navigate the dynamics of her troubled family: her depressed mother, her distant and workaholic father, and a brother so remote and strange that he actually seems to be disappearing.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake handles its unusual theme with a gentle touch, taking the impossibility as a given in Rose's life and examining how she comes to terms with it and what it says about her and her family. It joins the ranks of well-respected novels with fantastic or science-fictional themes, such as Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic fable The Road, Kit Reed's view of the not-so-distant future in Thinner Than Thou, and Margaret Atwood's classic futuristic novel The Handmaid's Tale. - Michelle (Sunset)