"The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" begins, unsurprisingly with a lemon cake. A few days before she turns nine, Rose Edelstein comes home from school to find that her mother has baked her a pre-birthday cake. Biting into a piece, Rose tastes "absence, hunger, spiraling, hollows." The cake contains a message her mother has unknowingly sent, a message Rose cannot digest.
Rose now carries a dark secret; she has a new skill, a sad superpower. She can taste people's feelings in the food they make: anger in a cookie, adultery in roast beef. Slowly, she adapts. Whenever possible, she eats processed food and develops a love of vending machines. When forced to eat her mother's food, she distracts herself from the emotional ingredients by focusing on the material ones. Soon, she can identify potato farms and pasta factories, truck routes and tomato pickers. She can tell a California orange from a Florida orange in less than five seconds. She knows with certainty if a food is organic.
Meanwhile, her family comes into an almost-focus; Rose's skill illuminates those around her just enough to make her feel all the more in the dark. Who are these people? A father, who has such an acute fear of hospitals that his first sight of his baby daughter is through binoculars from the sidewalk below. A relentlessly cheerful mother, who at her core harbours loss and loneliness. And a distant brother who spirals farther and farther away, perfecting a strange skill of his own.
Aimee Bender's book displays a magical cooperation between dream and reality so seamless and persuasive that, upon finishing it, the reader feels utterly awake and unalone.
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