The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Years ago I read a short story by Aimee Bender ("The Color Master") and fell deeply in love with her writing. I don't usually become quite so attached to an author based on such a small sampling of work. But that story was just that good. It made me miss my metro stop, which has only happened to me two other times in my life (Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson. So that's the kind of company she's in in my mind).

I wanted to read more of her work, but I was also scared. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake was always there on the shelf at the bookstore, taunting me. It couldn't possibly be as good as that short story I read. Maybe that short story wasn't even as good as I remembered. But I re-read The Color Master, and I still loved it, so when I saw her novel at the library sale, it finally felt like time to pick it up.

I shouldn't be surprised that I loved this book, which is about family and sorrow and expectations. It went in a very different direction than I expected it to in the beginning. About halfway through it turns into a horror story with a truly terrifying scene. But then it backs off that and becomes about sorrow again. About meeting your expectations or not meeting them or recognizing that it's time to change them.

Bender's writing is simple and addictive. I didn't miss any metro stops this time around, but I did have a hard time putting the book down. The world is a little bit surreal (the main character can taste the emotion in food). The ending is a little bit unsatisfying, but it fits the story. Not everything gets solved and all you can do is make the best of it and move forward.

The sadness in this book isn't something to be solved. There isn't a happy ending. The characters must learn to live with it, in their own ways. It keeps them apart as much as it brings them together. And that's okay. That's what life is like sometimes. As long as you keep going, you'll make it through.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shadows of Self

Let's dive right into the biggest problem I had with this book, which is Sanderson's treatment of Lessie. Wax's lady-love, in a classic case of fridging, gets killed in the prologue of The Alloy of Law , giving Wax a reason to return to the big city and mope around for a while. She turns back up in the prologue of this book, which details how she and Wax met. And at first I was excited to get a bit more backstory. I wondered if maybe all the prologues would be about her, letting her be more than the awesome woman who died to give Wax some man-pain. This turned out not to be the case. Instead, the prologue was just there to remind us that she existed. Until it's revealed at the very end of the book that she's been alive all along, having faked her own death on God's orders. (It makes slightly more sense than that.) This comes up just in time for her to die in Wax's arms again, sending him into a fresh bout of grief plus bonus loss of faith in God. That'...
Read more

Specials

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr...
Read more

Parable of the Sower: The Graphic Novel

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.
Read more