To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.
Rating: 2/5
Trigger Warnings:
Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t read the book, this review will contain spoilers so it’s up to you if you continue…
This book had such a unique premise. Rose Edelstein can taste feelings. She can discern what was being felt by whoever made her food, where it was made, what state the meat came from and how the animal was reared. Sounds fun, right?
Wrong. Rose’s talent is more curse than gift. Throughout the novel her discovery of other people’s feelings - those close to her and those anonymous makers of packaged food - has a profound effect on her. She’s nine years old when this begins, and only twelve when she learns (through eating a meal full of romance and guilt) that her mother is having an affair. The foods she eats are full of feelings no child can process properly, and I think that’s where this book is outstanding. My favourite moment is when Rose eats a stranger’s sandwich at a cookie shop, and tells him the sandwich is begging to be loved. To me, that moment was the epitome of misunderstood emotion. The stranger did not understand what Rose was talking about because he thought his girlfriend (who had made the sandwich) was happy. How often do we think we understand those around us only to learn we were wrong? The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is about what happens when we do understand them, when we understand them far too much.
I didn’t think Lemon Cake was incredible, but it was interesting. I loved the various people Rose interacted with; those who she told and those who believed her especially. George believed her because he was interested in the uniqueness of it, Sherrie believed her because she wanted desperately for her feelings to be heard, her dad believed her because in some abstract way he knew all along.
However, I have never been met with a more disappointing and frustrating ending. Not frustrating in the fun ‘what happens next I need to know’ way either. The majority of the book had been good - not amazing, but it solidly sat in ‘good’. The premise was incredible, the storyline fairly strong and definitely interesting, the characters were well developed and individual. The ending was awful.
Major spoilers for the ending beyond this point…
I understood where the book was going as soon as Rose visited her brother’s flat upon her mother’s request and found him alone in the dark, unmoving from his chair. I didn’t understand her description in the slightest, but somewhere in the back of my head there was a recognition of what was going on with him, and that he had his own special skill. At that point though, I was desperately hoping I was wrong. I wasn’t. Her brother turned into a chair.
How can you take such a unique idea and interesting story and end it by telling us her brother decided to live as a chair?! Honestly, I wish I could articulate my thoughts better on the subject but it just makes me angry. I feel like I was cheated out of an honest ending. Even worse, the book was headed in that direction; Rosie had figured out a way to use her gift and seemed happier than she had for the majority of the book. She hadn’t just become an adult, we had seen her grow into herself. I would have been so happy if the book had ended with Rose working at La Lyonnaise and learning how to leave her parent’s home: it would have been a good book. The ‘twist’ that came at the end though, that last bit of intrigue an author puts in to make the end of their book a little less predictable, absolutely ruined this book.
If I could tear out the last chapter of Lemon Cake I absolutely would, I would just pretend it didn’t happen and her brother’s disappearance was an unsolved mystery, some cliffhanger left for the reader to fill in how they want. I don’t need any explanation of Rosie’s gifts, I don’t care that her grandfather and dad clearly had unexplained and unexplored gifts too, I can happily suspend my disbelief for all of that, but I draw the line at turning your character into furniture.
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