The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel

by Aimee Bender Narrated by Aimee Bender

Overview

The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.

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 cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother-her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother-tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden-her mother's life outside the home, her father's detachment, her brother's clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender's place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle).

Editorial Reviews

NOVEMBER 2010 - AudioFile

Rose Edelstein can tell people’s emotions from tasting the food they make—deeply if they’ve worked a while on it, but even a piece of toast can betray things she most definitely doesn’t want to know. Author-narrator Aimee Bender has a pleasant voice, and she does her best when delivering dialogue that expresses the emotions in the food Rose has just eaten. Gradually, other family members confide unusual and eerie “gifts” that help Rose put her own uniqueness into perspective. Bender delivers her book with a slow, somber delivery. One can’t help but wonder what a more expressive narrator might have done to bring this singular story to life. D.G. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2010 - AudioFile

Rose Edelstein can tell people’s emotions from tasting the food they make—deeply if they’ve worked a while on it, but even a piece of toast can betray things she most definitely doesn’t want to know. Author-narrator Aimee Bender has a pleasant voice, and she does her best when delivering dialogue that expresses the emotions in the food Rose has just eaten. Gradually, other family members confide unusual and eerie “gifts” that help Rose put her own uniqueness into perspective. Bender delivers her book with a slow, somber delivery. One can’t help but wonder what a more expressive narrator might have done to bring this singular story to life. D.G. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172078927
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	06/01/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	937,929

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