The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender: book review
Overview: Rose can taste feelings. She can understand what someone is going through, their deepest emotions just by tasting someone's food–whether it be a cake or something as simple as toast. The novel follows Rose from the onset of this ability (magic trick, curse, gift...) through her becoming a grown-up around 22. While Rose is navigating her own struggles with her food-related medium skills, her older brother Joseph struggles with his own inherited sensitivity. Overall: 3.5
Characters: 4 Rose is what holds this book together. More precisely, the idea of Rose is brilliant. I love Bender's way of discussing parentification through the lens of a surrealist twist. Rose's ability to taste emotion through food feels very akin to the hyper-sensitive way that some children learn to read emotional cues to smooth things over within their family before issues arise because the parents struggle to regulate themselves. Rose's ability spills into other areas of her life, just like these traits are sometimes helpful but often lead to much deeper issues for kids. I found it moving, compelling, and in some ways, relatable. The problem is that the concept is far better than the ultimate execution. Rose struggles to develop beyond her food-feelings.
Her family is key to the story, but they remain vague sketches. Her dad seems reserved, and we're told a million times that he hates hospitals. Her mother seems to be having a midlife crisis in every possible way–which is very interesting–but the why is never delved into, so it seems hollow. Her brother is tightly wound, precocious until his gifted kid reputation becomes more of a reputation than reality, disinterested in Rose, and ultimately, likely, depressed. His character's underdevelopment is particularly detrimental to the book as his own "powers" are revealed towards the end of the book. Without understanding Joseph, it's hard to connect to what happens to him beyond the surface level.
Plot: 3 This is an average novel that could've been a spectacular short story. It just felt too thin to support the word count of a book. The beginning dragged as we sat in the establishing scenes too long past understanding the contours of Rose's special abilities. Then, as the rest of the story unfolded, the repetition continued as certain plot points are mulled over long past being stale. There's so many interesting ideas here. There just weren't quite enough to propel the whole book without creating some major pacing issues. I found the story compelling, but at times, I struggled to get through it because I got bored. The general arch of Rose being bestowed these powers and then ultimately learning to see them in a positive light is great. The additional layers meant to fill space were less so.
Spoiler Then her brother turns into a chair–the ultimate answer to where he goes on these long series of disappearances that define most of Rose's late teenage and early adult years–which is certainly a metaphor for depression or something akin to that but does not translate well in the narrative. It is genuinely so absurd that Rose doesn't know how to tell everyone what she knows, which just creates a lot of frustrating round-about conversations while I as the reader tried to understand if I did, in fact, read that his legs had become one with the chair legs correctly. As this overtakes the plot for a time, I went to skimming. There is no depth to this chair situation or the realities of his depression. This could most definitely be moving, if handled in the right way, but delivered completely out of context, thrust onto a character that's hardly developed, it just doesn't work.
Writing: 3.5 My previous exposure to Aimee Bender's work was via her short story "The Rememberer," which I really enjoyed. I remember it being a divisive story in our class discussion, and it seems like this novel is similar. In the story, a woman's boyfriend becomes a number of animals until she has to set him free into the sea. To me, it felt like an inventive way of illustrating the steps of mourning a relationship. It worked for me. It was too out-there for others. So when I was recommended this book, I expected to like it. Even though I don't typically read sci-fi or fantasy, I'm always intrigued by contemporary stories with a twist. The issue is that the development never fully clicked together. It had all the elements that worked in Bender's short story, but the story didn't require the full spectrum of development that a novel does. I just felt like she couldn't support the concept all the way to the end, which left me with murky feelings about the end result.
More on Reading, Writing, and Me:
Comments
Post a Comment