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Title: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Author: Aimee Bender
Genre: Literary fiction/magical realism
Thingummies: 4.5
Synopsis: A young girl discovers that when she eats, she can taste the emotions of the people who made the food.
Thoughts: All right, this is much of what I'm looking for in literary fiction. Many of the things that can bog a literary novel down go right here. The Edelstein family is made up of lost, flawed people who nonetheless are trying and so win your heart in their ordinariness. The plot is gentle and wholly subservient to character development, but Bender does have an ending in mind. No one's living happily ever after, but there's enough resolution to feel like an actual story. Since I frequently get terribly frustrated with the self-indulgence, bitterness, and whimpering endings of a lot of literary fiction, these things are important to me.
More importantly, in this book, the strengths of the genre shine. The prose is lovely without being ostentatious, the character portraits are deeply insightful, and I rather love the conceit, both as an imaginative fantastic device and also as a symbol of the loss of awareness inherent in growing up, especially in a quietly troubled family.
Rose Edelstein's family is not a showy dysfunctional. There's just a quiet rift between each of the members, which they paper over as neatly as they can. Rose's mother is a free spirit who's lost in her tied-down world. Her brother is a brilliant recluse, verging on Aspergers. Her father is a simple man who wants simple things and ignores a powerful gift to do so, and cannot figure out how to reach the rest of his very-complicated family. Rose herself is unaware of these currents until she begins to be able to taste her mother's emptiness in her lemon birthday cake. From there on, Rose's too-strong awareness of other people leads to a bubbly, friendly child gradually withdrawing, until she is forced to find her own way back out into the world.
I loved Rose's observances and insightfulness. I loved that while there are no neat answers, she does eventually find ways to bridge her own loneliness. This is not a weighty book--it's as lovely and graceful as a bird, skimming over dark, dark waters.
Author: Aimee Bender
Genre: Literary fiction/magical realism
Thingummies: 4.5
Synopsis: A young girl discovers that when she eats, she can taste the emotions of the people who made the food.
Thoughts: All right, this is much of what I'm looking for in literary fiction. Many of the things that can bog a literary novel down go right here. The Edelstein family is made up of lost, flawed people who nonetheless are trying and so win your heart in their ordinariness. The plot is gentle and wholly subservient to character development, but Bender does have an ending in mind. No one's living happily ever after, but there's enough resolution to feel like an actual story. Since I frequently get terribly frustrated with the self-indulgence, bitterness, and whimpering endings of a lot of literary fiction, these things are important to me.
More importantly, in this book, the strengths of the genre shine. The prose is lovely without being ostentatious, the character portraits are deeply insightful, and I rather love the conceit, both as an imaginative fantastic device and also as a symbol of the loss of awareness inherent in growing up, especially in a quietly troubled family.
Rose Edelstein's family is not a showy dysfunctional. There's just a quiet rift between each of the members, which they paper over as neatly as they can. Rose's mother is a free spirit who's lost in her tied-down world. Her brother is a brilliant recluse, verging on Aspergers. Her father is a simple man who wants simple things and ignores a powerful gift to do so, and cannot figure out how to reach the rest of his very-complicated family. Rose herself is unaware of these currents until she begins to be able to taste her mother's emptiness in her lemon birthday cake. From there on, Rose's too-strong awareness of other people leads to a bubbly, friendly child gradually withdrawing, until she is forced to find her own way back out into the world.
I loved Rose's observances and insightfulness. I loved that while there are no neat answers, she does eventually find ways to bridge her own loneliness. This is not a weighty book--it's as lovely and graceful as a bird, skimming over dark, dark waters.
