The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
People who aren’t Cory Doctorow fans won’t get this, but this novel is the ontological (or maybe phylogenic) prequel to Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Somebody, somewhere will see this and laugh and laugh. If you’re that person, drop me a line; we are friends who don’t know each other yet.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is the most horrifying kids-with-magic-powers novel, because it is the one with the lightest touch. In this book there is the stroke of a feather which is the fall of lightning.
I heard a great author say recently, “Render the objects. Please, just render the objects.” Aimee bender is so very, very good at rendering the objects; the world of the novel is incredibly convincing. We may need to make a genre of novel called ‘miracle’; novels that take the reality of the world and the impossibility of the things that happen in the world and bind those two things so tightly together that there’s no line where one ends and the other begins.
As Chesterton said,
It was wrought in the monk’s slow manner
Of silver and sanguine shell
Where the scenes are little and terrible
Keyholes of heaven and hell
In the river island of Athelney
With the river running past
In colours of such simple creed
All things sprang at him, sun and weed
Till the grass grew to be grass indeed
And the tree was a tree at last
View all my reviews