Review: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

I've been dying to read this book ever since I read Kerry's review a month or so ago.  And not just because the cover is awesome.  (I'm happy to report that my brain hasn't turned to total mush over the past few years).

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake tells of a young girl named Rose who has the gift of being able to taste how a person is feeling in the food they cook or bake.  This novel is the perfect blend of reality and the supernatural, and an absolute joy to read.  The first 50 pages or so are sufficiently fluffy for a summer read, and drew me in with their their sensual, gritty, (often) succulent, descriptions of food and the act of eating.  I was also very much attracted by the whole LA vibe.  Even in the mid-summer heat, the idea of a year-round warm climate is very attractive to me, and I'm rarely known to reject an opportunity to live vicariously.  

Yet there is a grim undertone to Lemon Cake that is impossible to ignore, even in the passages that glitter like the warm, seemingly endless Southern California sun.  The thing that struck me about this book, is that about 90% of the food described by Rose tastes either sad or empty.  That which is prepared by her mother, for instance, is nearly always filled with negative emotions of some sort.   Foods prepared by the lunch ladies in the school cafeteria, or employees at the local bakery are described as tired, rushed, sad, and angry. Eventually, Rose is even able to taste the over-worked lettuce pickers in a box of mixed greens.  To avoid all the suffering, she spends much of her childhood and adolescence seeking out heavily processed foods from freezers or vending machines that have experienced minimal human contact. 

 I know that Bender is trying to make a point here about the state of the world's food crisis and/or the human condition in a capitalist society and/or something I haven't even considered.  Yet all that becomes somehow insignificant in the face of what evolves into an extremely memorable - one may even say haunting - series of revelations and plot developments.  (I don't want to give too much away because I want you all to go out and read this book.)  Somehow, however, the subtle not-quite-message that runs through Lemon Cake is what makes it such a compelling read.  

Maybe eventually I'll figure it out, but I doubt it.  Right now, I'm happy just to bask in the afterglow that results from reading a truly great novel.