The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

After I had QT this spring a friend of mine gave me a Chapters gift card as a baby gift thinking I needed some gifts too. LOVE THIS FRIEND! So off to Chapters I headed and it was wonderful. I had a hard time picking books. But one on my list of was The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. I had heard great things and I knew it was food fiction, something I had enjoyed in the past but had gotten a little sick of from reading too much of it.

I had also tried to read this book before but at first glance it was reading like a young adult attempt at food fiction chick lit and I was not enjoying the first few pages and gave up- twice. While I've enjoyed a lot of food fiction, none come close to my love for the first one I ever read -Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel which came out in 1989, long before the food lit craze. Granted, I didn't read it till 2002, but even that was before everyone was writing about the mystical powers of food.

Despite having attempted twice I still kept hearing things about this book and the library's wait list was still rather extensive. So bought it I did and I am so glad that I did. This book is so unique compared to others in its genre that I would have wanted to own it anyway. Upon finishing it I felt like it was potentially a view into some of the other children who could have potentially attended Dr. Xavier's school in X-men. I am still not even sure that this falls into the genre of food lit/chic lit and not sci-fi! It feels like chic lit, tastes like chic lit, but by the end it's very much science fictional. And for that, it's completely refreshing. And for that reason I liked it. But it was so stereotypical of food lit/chic lit at times that I'm still not sure I actually liked it. And for that reason, I liked it. Bizarre, hey?

Things I liked about the book...the twist from typical food lit. The lightness and easiness to read. The touching moments between father and daughter. The shape of the protagonist's character. The revelation about the father and the understanding that this leads to- for the children and of the father himself. I like how the mother is front and centre for much of the book and Dad is in the background but it is he who holds the real beauty and magic and how all of that gives you a real sense of how Rose, the protagonist, was feeling compared to her brother.

What I didn't like about the book-you didn't realize that the protagonist understands what is happening to Joe (her brother) until Rose reveals it but the book is told in first person through Rose. One of the first rules of writing in first person is that you have to reveal everything to gain the trust of the reader and make the narrative believable. Because the protagonist doesn't reveal all you feel like the author and the narrator kept a secret from you, you lose the trust and as a result the believability. This was my biggest issue.

Also, I still do not understand the relationship between the whole family and the grandmother. Nor do I understand why the character was included at all, never mind an eccentric one at that.

Lastly, lemon cake with chocolate icing, really?? Could've done much better. Who puts chocolate frosting on lemon cake, geez.

All in all I am glad I read it, and may have to read it again to see if I can catch clues about the ending throughout the book now that I know what happens. I really did like the magical elements in this book. It was much different from other "super powers" in food fiction and yet it had the satisfaction of your same old favorite recipe.