Aimee Bender: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (December 2025)

At the age of nine Rose tastes her mother’s lemon cake and clearly detects and feels her mother’s emotional state. This ability extends to strangers and even to her knowing the origins of the ingredients and the factories where the food is manufactured. We follow her struggles to adapt and cope with this intense and often distressing gift, or curse, throughout her childhood and Into early adulthood.

This being a magic realist novel, the reader takes it at face value but her condition is so odd she is afraid to share it. However, her older brother’s school friend from science class does take an interest and is sympathetic.

Rose’s family is small, isolated and dysfunctional with only a very eccentric grandmother who never visits and they only contact her by phone or when they receive parcels from her that contain odd items of junk.

Her father is affectionate but he doesn’t really connect with his family, regarding his role as provider and little more.

The brother, to us, appears to be severely autistic but is almost at genius level in the sciences. He is not able to develop this because the colleges are not interested in accepting him and nobody steps in to speak up on his behalf.

We wondered if the mother had bi-polar but this was not explained and neither was her relationship with her lover.

This, for us, was a recurring problem with this novel. We became invested in a character or the various plot developments but they went so far and fizzled out. Readers don’t need to have everything spelt out, of course, but we were so often baffled and frustrated.

There is a conversation between Rose and her father towards the end of the book but, again, not fully explored and led to confusion about her brother’s autism.

There were so many unanswered questions in a novel that might have been a fascinating study in dysfunction and lack of communication in a struggling family.

This book did receive good reviews when it came out but we only gave it 2/5