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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake / Aimee Bender

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Love the title, but now having finished the book it's as if the author thought up the almost-too-clever title first and tried to put a story behind it second. There's a touch of the supernatural in this novel with Rose, the protagonist, possessing the rather extraordinary skill of divining people's emotions and psychological well-being through the food they harvest or prepare. Rose first notices her mother's emotion in her rendition of a birthday cake (hence the title of the book), and as she matures it is nearly impossible for Rose to swallow any food that has bitter emotions associated with it, and she survives adolescence by frequenting the school's snack machine with all its industrially-manufactured snacks (and no human hands involved, and thus no poisoned emotion), but what teenager doesn't survive the teen years on twinkies? Well, okay, Rose's unusual talent was an interesting plot device, but it goes to the next level or extraordinary when she becomes somewhat of a food-sommelier, able to pinpoint geographic areas and even particular factories where food was picked or processed, in addition to knowing that a baker was rushing when she made a batch of cookies, or that the short order cook had just had a marital spat when he made that French onion soup one day... Well, you get the idea.

Rose discovers a secret affair that her mother is having, supposedly via clues in her food. Oh, and just to complicate the plot, Rose's brother has an even more unusual superhuman skill, making this family seem like a version of The Incredibles.

What starts out as a quirky and promising premise, rather disintegrates by the end of the novel, in my humble opinion. I read until the end trying to discover the revelation of why this family was so extraordinary, what was the key to their existence, and while the author tries to establish a genetic link through the grandfather and father, it just didn't gel. Read it, if only to find out why Rose keeps a card table chair in her storage area at work. You will honestly never guess why unless you read the book.

Oh, and to whet your appetite for the prose that is in store, here are two excerpts: "He held that glass of water in his hand, unsipped, which only served to reflect the room back to him, cylindrically." ...and, "Monsieur cocked his head. Late-morning wake-up lines still radiated from his eye corners." I don't mean to "dis" this book too much, but the prose is a little clunky at times. Maybe Aimee Bender's next novel will be the one to read. Lemon Cake shows promise, but it wasn't a home run for me. You probably won't stay up late reading this novel, so there will be no risk of late-morning wake-up lines radiating from your eye corners! Which might be a good thing.

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