RECAP of Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cakeby Aimee Bender
Appropriate age: Upper High School and up (Alex Awards)

This book has many allegories related to dealing with the dysfunction of the family. The brother learns to disappear. The mother buries her feelings deep down. Rose essentially has an eating disorder.

The family all are denying reality in some way. Rose’s brother can’t deal with the world and doesn’t want to be a part of it. Mom is a bit crazy/off from the beginning: Her attraction to her son may be because he wasn’t fully there. Mom wants to be anchored and looks for people who can anchor her: husband, son, lover. Rose tries to avoid the bitterness of life by not eating proper food. Dad avoids any deep subject and only peripherally involves himself in the family life. Dad is like a guest – same routine, but doesn’t really interact with them/ absence.

The significance of Grandmother being more a disembodied voice over the phone or by letter/package shows more absenteeism within the family, each person living their lives in their own individual silos next to each other. Never really seeing or knowing each other.
Rose and Joseph’s friend George ends up being the voice of reason and help for them both. He tries to help them accept what their potential really is and gives them a safe place to show who they are.

Our group really felt for Rose. She is super sensitive, acutely aware, wanting in love, very lonely – her “Factory” at her core shows she’s turned off /cold towards her family in order to protect herself but it also exacerbates her lonliness.

Are most people’s deep feelings negative in their life? Why does Rose so frequently taste the negative? Our group discussed how more often people try to repress negative feelings, so it would stand to reason that most of what Rose tastes is the deep negative feelings of repression.

Ultimately it is Rose being drawn to cooking that helps heal her and makes her more whole. She learns from the French woman how to be more present with herself. There is so much emotion attached to preparing and eating food.

Validation and affection through art: The French woman uses her cooking to be at peace and rest, Mother with her craftsmanship the love she felt and had was going into the creations, George embraced the idea of imperfections. Symbolizes being whole and that within the whole there are imperfections. Joseph’s attempt at the perfect circle is his frustration with the imperfection of the world.

Joseph/Desert & Geode and Rose was a Rainforest/seaglass – Joseph harsh but interesting; Rose is diverse, sensitive and pretty, formed by forces

Rose seeing Joseph in the apartment – Saw him as leaving, he had been disappearing for a long time. Shaken but not surprised. Card table chair – cold, functional, impersonal, factory-made

Discuss the image of trees and last lines of the novel:
First tree line – Joseph – intellect but can’t deal with the world
Second tree line – Mom perhaps, surviving but not straight and whole
Last line of trees – Rose /George chance to live and accept and be whole
Last line of the book – She had alternative choices in the world, but Joseph really hadn’t.

Misc. Notes: May appeal to teens who are struggling with their own family dynamics or just the fact that they are feeling out of place because they are in that in between stage of child/adult. Finding their place in the world.

March Book: Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman