Showing results for "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake Aimee Bender" in All Categories

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

The author of An Invisible Sign of My Own, whose work has been presented at Selected Shorts performances, discusses her second novel, a lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse. She is interviewed by Heidi Julavits (novelist and co-editor of The Believer). A selection is performed by Lillo Way.