The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender, Doubleday
In her second novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender takes some simple ingredients –an appealing protagonist and a talent for storytelling - to concoct a delicate, richly nuanced narrative about an ordinary family with some extraordinary abilities.
On her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein receives a gift she does not want and cannot return when she discovers she can taste the emotions of whoever has prepared her food. This is revealed after Rose takes a bite of the particular cake of the title, a birthday cake baked by the cheerful, engaging mother she adores. What she tastes, however, translates as “absence, hunger, spiraling, hollows.” Unable to communicate what she feels to her mother, Rose swallows what she has learned.
Silence is an unacknowledged member of the Edelstein family of Hollywood, CA, a town where appearance and reality are rarely acquainted. Outwardly, the Edelsteins give the impression that they’re perfectly normal. Dad is a lawyer and Mom, a housewife adroit at everything yet always seeking new challenges. Young Rose, unremarkable but appealing, adores her older brother, Joseph, who is thought to be something of a genius. He has a laconic nature that comes off as teenage angst. Rose and her parents, on the other hand, do converse during shared meals, yet nothing telling is ever revealed in their conversations.
The sadness in the lemon cake is the first of many experiences that will shape and rule Rose’s life but it takes her time to define what happens to her when she eats. Yet knowing is not the same as understanding or accepting, such as the time Rose, a loving daughter, tries to share what she has learned from her mother’s pie.
“You’re so sad in there...and alone, and hungry, and sad–”
“In where??”
“In the pie.”
Rose is devastated not only by what she learns but also by her mother’s staunch refusal to acknowledge the truth. This makes Rose’s gift twice as unpalatable. Along with the emotions of others, she learns she must swallow their secrets.
How many times have we wished we could truly understand what is going on with a parent or a sibling? Bender shows us the perils of too much information. With each bite of this beautifully-written novel, she reminds us how little we know about the family we are born into, and how much love and acceptance is needed when truths are revealed.
Ultimately, the Edelsteins are a family of loners, emotionally invisible to each other. Even the last living grandparent is so detached as to replace affection with shipments of used furniture.
Rose’s dad works hard to hold his world in check. His motto says it all: “Keep it simple.” He is contained and rational, except when it comes to hospitals, which he will go blocks out of his way to avoid. Oddly, no one ever challenges this bizarre behaviour that leaves him at the hospital door when his wife is giving birth or his son is deathly ill.
Rose’s mother is disillusioned with her marriage, dissatisfied with her lack of accomplishment and unable to fathom why the son she loves so deeply is unreachable. She is dogged in her effort to keep him connected to her and the family, despite his manifest desire to be left alone. In the end, however, neither she nor Rose can prevent Joseph’s disappearance.
What holds this sometimes illusory story and the Edelstein family together is Rose. From the pitch-perfect nine year-old to the woman she finally becomes, Bender’s ability to transfer Rose’s every emotion to her reader is an accomplishment worthy of a remarkable storyteller and a world class confectioner.
This review originally appeared in Rover Arts
http://roverarts.com/2010/10/having-sadness-and-eating-it-too/
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