This book had a great premise, but went absolutely nowhere. Ok, so she can taste people's feelings and exactly where the food came from. Seems like two totally different talents to me, but here are combined as one. I wish it would've only been people's feelings because i think the author takes an easy out with having Rose want to eat only highly processed foods because there is less human interaction. This gives Rose an easy way to not deal with her problem. I also thought the entire Joseph stor...

The best thing about this book is the cover. I looked at it quite a few times before I realized the shadow wasn't reflecting the cake, but a girl; I'm guessing the narrator, Rose.Upon first glance and the reading of the synopsis, I'm reminded of The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood which I haven't read in years and would like to skim through again.And it was all downhill from there. I can't decide if I should go into detail here about how much I disliked this book or not. I probably should becaus...

Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Amazon || PinterestWhen I looked at my friends' reviews for THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE, I noticed that almost all of my friends who read it gave it negative reviews. After reading this book for myself, all I have to say is that this book proved to me that you can't always trust your friends. (Sorry, friends!) Reading is such a highly subjective experience, and what works for you doesn't always work for someone else (and vice-versa).After reading

I loved it. I know there are a lot of mixed reviews out there about this novel, but I loved it. (I have no prior Aimee Bender experience, so I had no expectations going in, btw). I thought the writing was lovely and sharp, really one of the best parts of the novel. I wasn't bothered by the lack of punctuating dialogue. I wasn't bothered by the fact that this was a novel in which things didn't really happen -- because I think they did. They just happened very quietly, as quietly as Joseph turning...

after: oh dear. oh Aimee. i love you so, have loved you so, continue to love you so, but i am so sorry to say that this book was a bit of a disappointment. it felt... unfinished. hinted at. like an early draft, almost. i know how stunning you can be, and it isn't that this is bad or anything... it's just not up to the standard i expected. which is probably partially my fault. probably just like The Ticking Is the Bomb , just like The Learners , just like The Great Perhaps , just like al...

I have struggled for very long with how to review this book. Normally I can manage to spew out something at some point, but this has had me puzzled for so long. I simply don’t know how to say what I want to say about it. It was not what I expected at all. I expected a sweet, coming of age book. The kind of book you didn’t necessarily have to take too seriously or think about for too long. Instead it was an incredibly tender and profound book that asks questions I don’t quite know how to answer.

Metaphorically decadent, but acridly convoluted.The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a bizarre novel, but certainly not in a good way. The delectable premise of having a magical gift that can taste people's hidden emotions is fascinating, but when you infuse other individual's special "gifts" with a pint of magical realism into the already rich mixture, that's the time it becomes nauseously perplexing. Yes, there's a bitter sadness in this novel, but I'm not emotionally invested in any of the...

This plot was built on an interesting premise - the protagonist could taste every preparational element that went into the food she ate, including the undetected, subconscious emotions of the people who handled it. But this brings pain on the protagonist, as she seems to find only one or two human beings, throughout the course of her young life, who do not possess a divided emotional self that is racked with pain or frustration that permeate the food they make(query whether that is an ultra-, or...

Okay - I realize I'm not deep, and I can very seldom get the hidden meaning in what I read, but this is ridiculous. I can't find a single reason why anyone would read this book.SPOILER * SPOILER * SPOILER * SPOILERRose is a young girl who learns that she can taste the emotions of people in the food they cook. After some time, she can taste the "layers" in the food all the way back to where it was produced, for example, she can trace - by their taste - eggs to the actual county where they were ga...

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS****Every so often a book comes along that creates a divisive turmoil in me. Sometimes these books make me angry; sometimes they make me shake my head in wonder as to why exactly I read it; sometimes it takes months for me to really understand just how impactful the book was to me, which helps clear some of the fog or guilt or happiness or sadness or whatever I felt while reading it. THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE is such a book. Let me first say that this

Reading this so I can talk and/or rage about it with Mattie.I left a lot of rage in my comment on another review, but I will just say this book was an utter disappointment. The lack of quotation marks was annoying, but I could have gotten past that. Rose's ability was interesting in and of itself, but the author failed absolutely at doing anything interesting WITH it ... for a good half of the book it was an afterthought, an irrelevance. And when it was mentioned, it was disjointed, incoherent a...

You've got to be f*&king kidding me with this. Oh, I see, her brother has a "skill," too. HE TURNS INTO FURNITURE. What a joke. That is not a skill unless you are Professor Slughorn, and even then, it is kind of a lame one. And the fact that he either seems to have no desire to actually live a life because he didn't get into college or he chooses to be a chair forever? Nice one Aimee Bender. Well, have a nice life CHAIR in the closet of the restaurant. Lame.And WTF was up with the fact that the

Ohhhhhh, so, so good! At nine, Rose bites into a piece of cake and discovers that she can taste the emotions of whomever made the food she is eating. I kind of felt like Rose while reading this book - I could feel the emotions of the characters, which made it an intense, moving, slightly overwhelming experience. I feel like I've been run over by an emotional tractor, but not in a bad way...just in that my-god-life-is-messy-and-beautiful-and-how-the-hell-do-we-make-sense-of-it kind of way. Phew.

Wow. Extremely disturbing and haunting. And it was so depressing for most of the book but only because I didn't understand it until much too late. I will list my most favorite parts.#1. On page 64 - "...The punching bag tucked inside every chocolate chip." Also on the next page when the sandwich is telling her to love it. So funny and so incredibly inventive.#2. Chapter 20 - This page was the very first time it hit me that no one ever sent anything to the grandma. And it really hit me. I had to

If this book was a person I would fuck it with the sensitivity required of banging a lithe, twee hipster who loves cats, typewriters, sunshine and forests. Then I would take an overexposed photo of our intertwined post-coitus naked bodies whilst we wear bunny masks and straight into the wank bank it'd go. Though I must say, this book if it were an IRL person would be like Lee Holloway, all presumed innocence but in fact kinky as hell. Not that the book is kinky, it's deranged. A little off. So m...

The Edelstein family seems "normal" to outsiders, but the dysfunction of each family member makes up the gist of this story with Rose, the youngest, caught in the middle, especially when just before her 9th birthday, she learns that she possesses a "gift". Throughout the story, she learns how to understand, how to cope within her family and its secrets.Sometimes I sympathized with Rose, and sometimes she annoyed me, but as I kept listening, I began to understand why she did (or didn't) do the th...

Several reviewers have done a fine job of describing the characters and plot of Aimee Bender's lovely new novel, "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake," and I see no reason to be redundant by reviewing the same material. However, I think a word is in order about the differing reaction among reviewers to this work.Aimee Bender's magical realism, the use of the fantastical to explore the depths of the human heart, belongs to a particular tradition of writing. While to my mind Bender continues to b...

Posted at Shelf Inflicted Nine-year-old Rose Edelstein discovers her “gift” when she takes a bite out of her mother’s lemon cake. This gift is more of a curse, as Rose becomes privy to her mother’s emotional turmoil that is masked by her cheerful and outgoing personality.This quirky novel is certainly not for everyone, and I wasn’t quite sure it was for me either, but I quickly got sucked into Rose’s life as she discovers family secrets and learns more about herself. When the emotions get too ov...

I'm several chapters in and annoyed at the author's choice to completely ignore the style rule of punctuating dialogue with quotation marks. Hello? There's a reason for the rule, it alerts the reader that the words enclosed within those quotation marks are spoken words and allows the writing to flow smoothly. Over the last few years we've seen more and more books published where writers attempt to be innovative or clever by messing with standard punctuation and in my opinion few have been succes...

Bender uses magical realism in a coming of age tale, as young (9) Rosie begins to taste emotions in her food, which can make it a bit tough to keep down a meal. Her first taste of her new talent arrives with an empty feeling when Mom and Dad are going through a difficult time. Rosie must also cope with an older sibling, Joseph, to whom her mother attributes near-mystical qualities. In addition, as her talent has given her unnatural insight, she becomes the keeper of her mother’s darkest secret.T...