The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

A Novel

By: Aimee Bender

Narrated by: Aimee Bender

Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins

Publisher's summary

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 cake. 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.

The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’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 enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle).

©2010 Aimee Bender (P)2010 Random House

Critic reviews

"Odd and oddly beautiful....moving"--The Washington Post

"Haunting....Bender's prose delivers electric shocks....rendering the world in fresh, unexpected jolts. Moving, fanciful and gorgeously strange."--People Magazine

"Charming and wistful....[Bender] harness[es] her exquisite, bizarre sensitivity, in this haunting examination."-- The Atlantic

Good Story, Bland reading.

If you could sum up The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake in three words, what would they be?

Very Quirky Story. Fun idea.

What did you like best about this story?

The relationship between food.

What aspect of Aimee Bender’s performance would you have changed?

I would suggest more feeling, less monitone.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The story of the foot stool.

The Particular Sadness ofLemon Cake

I enjoyed the book, great story, but would have gotten more out of it if there would have been a different reader. The reader was very slow and lost me several times.

I said, she said, he said

While the story is interesting. It is very hard to listen to. There are SO MANY I,she,he "saids" that it seems like that is all that the you hear

Disappointing....

I so wanted to love this book. What an interesting premise, wonderful material... yet so poorly executed. I agree with previous reviews that this book needed a more attentive editor and a professional reader. (I enjoy autobiographies read by the authors, but otherwise it adds nothing, certainly a very poor choice in this case.) A nine year-old with the entirety of her experience in California cannot possibly imagine fields in Kansas and Nebraska. The author tries very hard to convey the overwhelming confusion of a child trying to cope with adult emotions she is forced to taste and consume, but fails to consistently represent the child's experience and point of view. What a waste. This manuscript was not nearly polished enough to have been published.

Description of Food

I love the writer's description of the food! This book made slow down and savor my food and cook with happy music.

Great story, boring narration

I thought the story was great but the author narrates it and she us very monotone and sounds bored.

Odd but engaging

I know this is a favorite with critics (or at least what I've read) but to me, it was a little bit of a letdown. I had just listened to Shantaram so it was such a slower pace and perhaps I was just not ready for such a leap in tempo. I believe it's read by the author and I really wish the author's would leave the narration to the professionals. The low key voice in this book didn't help. However, I was engaged until all the sudden the book just ended. I realize that a point was made but it was so abrupt that I felt cheated.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

I am listening to this book at the moment and am enjoying it. I'm glad I already downloaded it before reading the discouraging reviews as I'm sure they would have disuaded me from choosing this book which would have been a shame. l have favourite narrators but I also like to have variety of content and narration. Take the opprotunity to preview the narrator and give this book a chance.

A hard listen __ MONOTONE

While I have not finished the story. I am having a hard time listening. The reader has a monotone voice coupled with A LOT of I said, She said, He said ... So much so, that I all I remember is those phrases and not the story. Perhaps this would be better with a professional reader. Wish I could get a refund.

Author is a terrible narrator - story is so-so

Why would an author think she is a better reader for an audiobook than a trained professional? Her publisher and producer should have had the guts to tell that she's not up to the task. Their honesty might have given this light and somewhat interesting work a chance as an audiobook. Instead, listeners are subject to 8 hours of an annoying monotone. While some snippets of decent writing managed to emerge despite the mangled delivery, the book never seemed to fulfill its early promise. Too bad -- I had high hopes.