The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Find this book on Goodreads

I just want to say a quick apology for not visiting many blogs recently. Lots of stuff going on, not enough time to do it! Hopefully, normal service will return shortly. In the meantime, thank you for visiting me!

My Monday blogs are not designed to be book reviews. Instead they highlight books (and sometimes films or music) which hold a particular meaning for me, or influenced me, or just made me think. I hope you enjoy!


For those of you who are relatively new to my blog, you probably missed my mentions of this book. For those who've been around for a while, you probably couldn't avoid them!

I loved this book. I told everyone about this book. I wanted to have written this book.

If you've never heard of it, it tells the story of Rose who finds that she experiences the feelings of the person who made the food she's eating. In the case of manufactured food, she can even tell the area the food was made. She makes this discovery when she eats a slice of lemon cake her mother has made - her mother is not a happy woman.

From then on, Rose learns a lot about her mother she'd rather not know, and with the help of a friend, she searches for the most factory-produced foods she can find - the food without feeling. Later in the book, we learn Rose isn't the only person in her family to be afflicted with a strange gift.

What I loved more than anything about this book is that at no time did Bender try to explain why this was happening to Rose. It just was. I've written short stories where I've dropped readers into something and not given an explanation, but I was never sure whether it would work in a full-length novel.

That, though, is the point which seems to divide the reviewers on Goodreads. Some people love the fact it's a quirky read and makes you do some of the work - you have to make a few decisions yourself as to what you think is going on. Others hate it because there's no explanation, and to some extent no ending - they feel cheated that the story isn't fully opened out, and doesn't fit into the world they already know.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it? Is there a book you'd recommend for being slightly abnormal?