The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Aimee Bender, Doubleday, 292 Pages

A whimsical coming-of-age story, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake attempts to do in novel form what Aimee Bender has almost perfected in her short stories: marry our reality with another as a means of exploring the human tragicomedy. She is mostly successful, although I can't say Lemon Cake has the same sharpness of her shorter works. For all its cleverness and beauty, the novel is not nearly as focused in its narrative scope.




Here, Ms. Bender's conceit is that Rose Edlestien, a nine year old girl trapped in a idiosyncratic family, has the uncanny abiltiy to taste both the history of her food and the emotions of the people who prepare it. It is through this talent that Rose sees the unhappiness brewing below her mother's cheery exterior. This allows Bender to describe food as "hollow" and write beautiful sentences like "I tasted a kind of yelling, like the sandwich itself was yelling at me, yelling love me, love me, really loud."

It's a beautiful concept, especially as it catapults Rose into adulthood faster then puberty every could: first Rose learns her parents are unhappy, then she learns her mother has commenced an affair. But Ms. Bender never ties Rose's unique ability into the narrative arc and eventually the talent fades into the background until it is simply a characteristic as uninvolved with the novel's story as the color of Rose's hair. The one intriguing moment is when Rose eats a meal she herself has prepared - only to find it tastes distant, like it was made in a factory. Here Ms. Bender is in her element: here we have fantasy as a window into the character's soul.

The novel is far more successful when it deals with the unique ability of Rose's enigmatic brother. I won't ruin it but suiffce it to say that it's a heartbreaking metaphor for lonliness and suicide. These are the darkest parts of the novel which Ms. Bender's whimsy allows us to survive without things ever becoming maudlin.
 

Narrative quibbles aside, Lemon Cake remains an engaging book, the sort of "quirky kid in a quirky family" story that is fast becoming a standard premise in popular fiction (see The History of Love, Special Topics in Calamity Physics - any coming of age story, really) . With its young protagonist, youthful dilemmas and whimsical writing, Lemon Cake could just as easily sit in the YA section of the bookstore - although like most of the best books, adults will understand things on an entirely different level.