Rose is a young girl growing up in what seems to be the most normal of families. Her family live in a leafy southern California suburb, in a house so ordinary you paint in the green carpet of lawn without even being told. Rose’s parents are still married, having met at university. Her father is a lawyer, earning enough for her mom to stay at home. Joseph, Rose’s brother, is annoying as older siblings ever are, but also because he’s a brain. As the book opens, it is a few days before Rose’s ninth birthday, and she sits in the kitchen, doing homework, tasting the batter as her mom does a trial run of her birthday cake.
But, beneath the veneer of the 1950’s picture postcard, things are less than perfect in Rose’s family. Dad works long hours as a lawyer, and often spends evenings and weekends squirreled in his office on the phone. This leaves him disconnected from his family, who can find themselves feeling more supported than loved. Mom is dissatisfied with her life in that way those whose lives are given over to the care of children often are— she is listless, prone to headaches, lacking confidence and uncertain what the future holds. For years, Rose’s mom sustained herself through Joseph. He is, everyone recognizes, his mother’s favorite: At an early age, he was labeled a child prodigy, a distinction she encouraged, hoping to be reflected warmly in the glow of his special status and that through his successes her unrealized ambition might be fulfilled. But, a few years on, Joseph is just another smart eighth grader. Meanwhile, all the years with a “gifted tag” has left him a loner without many friends.
Mom supervises a door being cut through an outside wall into Joseph’s room— one last signal, be it confident or self-delusional, about the limitlessness of his future. While the kids are at school, she spends hours working with the carpenters, sawing and sanding, making certain that the details are just so. Dad comments that it seems strange to put so much work for a door into a room that only one of them goes into, ignoring the fact that the door also leads out. But not for Joseph: On the back of the experience, Mom joins a carpentry collective. She is anxious to recapture a sense of purpose, and carpentry is a chance to do something with her hands.
But, first, there is the matter of Rose’s birthday. To celebrate, she is treated to a special lemon birthday cake lovingly baked by Mom. Birthdays can be scary for children. Despite the excitement of parties and getting presents, it can be frightening to accept that the passage of time brings change. Anxious to have her treat, Rose sneaks a sliver while her mom is napping, but immediately senses that it doesn’t taste quite right. She can’t quite put her finger on it, but there, amid the lemon peel and brown sugar, is a pervading sense of sadness that she feels is somehow connected to her mom. The book chronicles Rose’s journey, from nine to her early twenties, and how she searches for way to accommodate this condition into her life.
I picked up Bender’s book, initially, hoping (from what I saw in the jacket summary) that the work could give me some insight into my two teenage daughters, and the complex relationship young women have with food. The story follows Rose from age nine to her early twenties, a period that corresponds from early adolescence to young adult, a time when young women struggle with images about their bodies, and when those struggles can morph into unhealthy habits and damage self-esteem. I wondered if a novel about food and emotions could help me understand some of what my daughters and their peers go through. Over time, Rose discovers she can taste the dissatisfaction in migrant workers picking her tomatoes and the plight of the dairy farmers providing the milk for her cheese. This condition takes much of the pleasure out of eating, and soon Rose prefers subsisting on fast food and items out of vending machines, since the food is processed and very little of the preparation is done by hand. This is the terrain where eating disorders are born— food being used as a void to fill a void, eating that is not so much about satisfying hunger as a hungering to be satisfied.
But, the more I read and digested Bender’s charming work, the more my attention turned to Rose’s parents. We parents want to believe we can hide things from our children— our thoughts, our histories, our dreams for them, the ones we once had ourselves that somehow got away. Almost invariably this is a lost cause. No one knows better who we are. All our secrets are on display. Being nine, Rose doesn’t have the vocabulary, and knowing things she shouldn’t know feels uncomfortable— like overhearing adults telling secrets you know weren’t meant for you to hear, but which curiosity makes you want to listen to anyway. Meanwhile, Joseph, Rose’s brother, is also struggling. Though being the “brain” gives him status, and a special role within his family, ultimately it carries a burden that, as he grows older, he doesn't want to bear. His future plotted out for years by his doting mother, Joseph wants to disappear into normality— opting out seems a more attractive option than to fail.
In “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake,” Aimee Bender offers a story that seems like a fairy tale, full of magic powers and mystery. But, like all good fairy tales, the story lingers because it resonates with the situations we find as we go about our lives. Becoming adult involves seeing, observing, endeavoring to make sense of things that in childhood appear as enigmas and confusions. It also involves emerging from the shadow of our parents— taking the elements they pass to us through birthright and osmosis, and fashioning them into a life we define for ourselves. Honing our skill of tasting, after all, is one of the ways we can learn to cook.
Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, published by Doubleday, $25.95
