The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

By Aimee Bender

Windmill, $36.99

Reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino

Magical realism can be an unsettling business especially when the realism side of the equation is as convincing as it is in this strange but moving novel.

Things begin conventionally enough. Rose Edelstein is a nine-year-old girl growing up in Los Angeles - Mum is the homemaker, Dad the provider, her elder brother Joseph is nerdy and moody. Then Rose’s mother bakes her a birthday cake, a chocolate and lemon one, and when she eats a slice she finds flavours in it that have nothing to do with the ingredients used. The cake tastes hollow, empty.

From then on every time Rose eats she can taste the emotions of the person who produced the food. She tastes her mother’s secret despair, the weariness of factory farm produced milk, the love in a ham and cheese sandwich, the sadness in a piece of fruit pie. This isn’t the unsettling part by the way. The pureness and clarity of Bender’s writing, the sensitivity with which she builds her characters and recounts their lives, makes it seem almost credible that an imaginative child might taste the feelings in food while at an age where she is struggling to understand the world around her.

And so surviving on bland, emotionless junk food Rose grows up. She develops a gentle crush on her brother’s best friend and finds the flaws in her family. Aside from her one oddity she seems a normal enough American girl.

Then, about three quarters of the way through this novel, the magic elbows out the realism. I wasn’t ready for what becomes of Rose’s brother. I won’t give away this part of the plot as it would be too much of a spoiler but suffice to say that things get very, very weird.

Whether this is too surreal a spin on the traditional coming of age story depends entirely on the tastes of the reader. Not everyone will like this book. Some will be frustrated by the questions that Bender never answers and the side roads in the story that seem not to lead anywhere. Others will insist on trying to apply logic to the plot and find themselves flummoxed. But there are bound to be many who appreciate such an original take on those well-worn themes of family, heartbreak and disappointment.

Personally I thought the book was a little uneven – it starts better than it ends – but I do love Bender’s prose and I admire her ability to write an ultimately uplifting novel so laced with despair and heartbreak.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake was a New York Time’s bestseller when it was released in the US last year and I can understand why.

Footnote:

Nicky Pellegrino, a succcesful Auckland-based author of popular fiction, The Italian Wedding was published in May 2009, Recipe for Life was published in April, 2010, while her latest The Villa Girls, was published three weeks ago and is riding high on the NZ bestseller list.. She is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on 17 April, 2011 as was the Booklover column below.

Postscript
Here are some other comments The Bookman has noticed this title has received:

‘A book with such beautiful writing that sometimes I have to stop and taste a sentence a second time’ - Jodi Picoult, Grazia


‘Intense, strange and incredibly moving, it captures the magic and the romance of the unknown. With nods to both Chocolat and The Time Traveler’s Wife, this is a beautifully written book and one that you will want to talk about long after you have finished reading it’ - Elle

‘A lovely book, warm and comforting with moments of sadness and brilliantly written’ - Bookseller

‘[Bender] careens splendidly through an obstacle course of pathological, fantastical neuroses… brimming with a zesty, beguiling talent’ - Publishers Weekly

‘As delightful as its title suggests’ - Glamour

‘A truly unique exploration of turbulent family relationships and a young girl on the cusp of adulthood grappling with grown-up emotions’ - Easy Living

Booklover

Charlotte Randall is a Christchurch-based author whose latest novel Hokitika Town (Penguin, $30) is currently on the bestseller list.

The book I love most is.....…What, only one? I guess I’d have to go for Life &Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee although, and this is probably weird, I’m not otherwise a great fan of his writing. I love the ending, and not just because I had no water after the earthquake:

He would clear the rubble from the mouth of the shaft, he would bend the handle of the teaspoon in a loop and tie the string to it, he would lower it down the shaft deep into the earth and when he brought it up there would be water in the bowl of the spoon; and in that way, he would say, one can live.

The book I’d like to read next is…......How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One by Stanley Fish. With a title like that I’ve been having a lot of fantasies about what it will be like, but I’m sure it can’t possibly live up to them.

The book that changed me is…...Austerlitz by WG Sebald. There aren’t many new ways of writing that please me, but this was one.

The book I wish I’d never read is.........…1266 by Roberto Bolano. While it was generous of my daughter to give it to me as a present, and I did request it, I found it tedious and depressing. Maybe it’s a bad translation. The flatness of the tone bored me to death. I admit I never finished it – very rare for me.