Book-It 'o14! Book #57
Dec. 11th, 2014 02:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alivemagdoleneThe Fifty Books Challenge, year five! (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013) This was a library request.
Title: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Details: Copyright 2010, Anchor Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap):
"The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the slice.
She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose. She can't eat her brother Joseph's toast, a cookie at the local bakery is laced with rage; grape jelly is packed with acidic resentment.
Rose's gift forces her to confront the secret knowledge all families keep hidden— truths about her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s strange detachment, Joseph’s clash with the world.
Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the heartbreak of loving those whom you know too much about. It is profound and funny, wise and sad, and it confirms Aimee Bender’s place as a writer's prose illuminates the strangeness of everyday life."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This came up as I stumble through the "magical realism" genre of fiction.
How I Liked It: This book, about a young girl's struggle to accept her own kind of psychometry of the tongue, starts off strong and weaves a taut, interesting narrative thread for the first three-fifths or so.
The author's lush prose and realistically awkward realism (with the magic realism) are downright enchanting and envelop the reader. So it's both aggravating and heartbreaking that the plot seems to fall out at the final two fifths or so of the book, and we're given what feels like a slap-dash ending. I found myself actually checking to make sure my copy wasn't missing pages (it wasn't) because I didn't actually think the author would leave the story that way.
The author is, judging by this novel alone, extremely talented and this is an intriguing concept whose execution is almost perfect. But what feels like a hastily written finish robs this book of its very deserved masterpiece status and leaves the reader (to butcher a metaphor) still hungry and wondering.
Throughout the half-decade course of this extended project, I've noted time and again how much worse it is to see books with potential but a flawed execution than to just read a poorly written book. The distinction I don't think has ever been closer than it's been with this book. The fact you can feel the perfect ending almost sliding away from your fingers is nothing short of absolute frustration, but you're still grateful that you care enough to feel that way.
Title: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Details: Copyright 2010, Anchor Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap):
"The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the slice.
She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose. She can't eat her brother Joseph's toast, a cookie at the local bakery is laced with rage; grape jelly is packed with acidic resentment.
Rose's gift forces her to confront the secret knowledge all families keep hidden— truths about her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s strange detachment, Joseph’s clash with the world.
Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the heartbreak of loving those whom you know too much about. It is profound and funny, wise and sad, and it confirms Aimee Bender’s place as a writer's prose illuminates the strangeness of everyday life."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This came up as I stumble through the "magical realism" genre of fiction.
How I Liked It: This book, about a young girl's struggle to accept her own kind of psychometry of the tongue, starts off strong and weaves a taut, interesting narrative thread for the first three-fifths or so.
The author's lush prose and realistically awkward realism (with the magic realism) are downright enchanting and envelop the reader. So it's both aggravating and heartbreaking that the plot seems to fall out at the final two fifths or so of the book, and we're given what feels like a slap-dash ending. I found myself actually checking to make sure my copy wasn't missing pages (it wasn't) because I didn't actually think the author would leave the story that way.
The author is, judging by this novel alone, extremely talented and this is an intriguing concept whose execution is almost perfect. But what feels like a hastily written finish robs this book of its very deserved masterpiece status and leaves the reader (to butcher a metaphor) still hungry and wondering.
Throughout the half-decade course of this extended project, I've noted time and again how much worse it is to see books with potential but a flawed execution than to just read a poorly written book. The distinction I don't think has ever been closer than it's been with this book. The fact you can feel the perfect ending almost sliding away from your fingers is nothing short of absolute frustration, but you're still grateful that you care enough to feel that way.
