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Showing posts from September 22, 2024

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender: book review

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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake  by Aimee Bender  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&