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

Disappointment

Narrator is terrible. Spoke slowly and without inflection in her voice. I had to double the speed to get through the book. The book had interesting nuggets that didn't link to anything logical to keep your interest. Characters were vaguely developed and did not have meaningful interrelationships. The end was unfathomable, indecipherable, and discombobulated. When finished my only thought was huh?

Flat reading

Love the writer as writer but the book is flatly read. Little modulation plus vocal fry makes the reader sound disinterested.

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.

Strange but interesting

The story was strange but it did pull you in and keep your attention.
I really enjoyed the descriptiveness of the writer.

Sort of sad

What made the experience of listening to The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake the most enjoyable?

Didn't like the book. A bit sad to read.

What was most disappointing about Aimee Bender’s story?

A person turning into furniture.

What three words best describe Aimee Bender’s voice?

Ok, not feminine, hard

If you could take any character from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake out to dinner, who would it be and why?

George. Seemed like a nice guy

gotta love Audible

What made the experience of listening to The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake the most enjoyable?

The book is certainly different,interesting and very worth a listen.If you are looking for mainstream, dont look here.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Main female character because she is complicated and simple at the same time

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

no , neither it made me keep rewinding to get my head around the storyline

Any additional comments?

It is a story which is very good but when transfered to Audio Book it is a bit weird.

Bad Narration, Flaws with the Story

The only reason why I even finished this book was that I was heading out on a 15 hour road trip by myself. The narration is monotone, which makes it difficult to stay engaged. The story, though initially intriguing, veers off in other directions - it honestly felt like it could've made an excellent short story or novella, but there wasn't quite enough there to fill out a novel.

Ultimately a good listen.

At first I had a very difficult time listening to the narration; the narrators voice was so grating and her inflections jarring. After awhile the story became so adsorbing that I realized it wasn't bothering me any more and indeed, I felt it was appropriate to the character. I didn't like the ending- it was a little bit hard to swallow; and that is why I gave it four out of five stars.

Excellent Story - read adequately - enjoyable

Excellent Story - author reads adequately - I listen to books not necessarily to be entained by the reader but to hear the story and I found the reader was fine and had adquate voice fluxuations for the stories tone. With the word "sadness" in the title you can guess it is a bit on the darker side. This was one of the better stories I have listed to this year.