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The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Aimee Bender
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
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Publisher's summary
The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.
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 curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” (San Francisco Chronicle).
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Liz Murray was born to loving but drug-addicted parents in the Bronx. In school she was taunted for her dirty clothing and lice-infested hair, eventually skipping so many classes that she was put into a girls' home. At age 15, Liz found herself on the streets when her family finally unraveled. She learned to scrape by, foraging for food and riding subways all night to have a warm place to sleep. Then, when Liz's mother died of AIDS, she decided to take control of her own destiny.
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unbelievably inspiring
- By Amazon Customer on 03-17-12
By: Liz Murray
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The Green Glass Sea
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- Narrated by: Julie Dretzin
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This first novel from Nebula Award-winning short story writer Ellen Klages was picked as a Junior Library Guild selection and named a Book Sense Number-One Children's Pick. It follows a young girl named Dewey, whose father is part of a super-secret project in 1943 Los Alamos. Dewey, a gifted scientist herself, slowly realizes the implications of "the gadget" her father is working on. She and Suze, another Los Alamos child, find comfort in each other's friendship.
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Wonderful!
- By Rita on 12-08-08
By: Ellen Klages
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When We Collided
- By: Emery Lord
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- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
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Seventeen-year-old Jonah Daniels has lived in Verona Cove, California, his whole life, and only one thing has ever changed: His father used to be alive, and now he is not. With a mother lost in a deep bout of depression, Jonah and his five siblings struggle to keep up their home and the restaurant their dad left behind. But at the start of summer, a second change rolls in: Vivi Alexander, the new girl in town.
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Wow. This story is a feast
- By Julia Fairchild on 04-24-16
By: Emery Lord
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How to Bake a Perfect Life
- A Novel
- By: Barbara O'Neal
- Narrated by: Tanya Eby
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In a novel as warm and embracing as a family kitchen, Barbara O’Neal explores the poignant, sometimes complex relationships between mothers and daughters - and the healing magic of homemade bread. Professional baker Ramona Gallagher is a master of an art that has sustained her through the most turbulent times, including a baby at 15 and an endless family feud. But now Ramona’s bakery threatens to crumble around her. Literally. She’s one water-heater disaster away from losing her grandmother’s rambling Victorian and everything she’s worked so hard to build.
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Good Listen...
- By L.W. on 08-03-13
By: Barbara O'Neal
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How to Be an American Housewife
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- By: Margaret Dilloway
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington, Emily Durante
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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How to Be an American Housewife is a novel about mothers and daughters and the pull of tradition. It tells the story of Shoko, a Japanese woman who married an American GI, and her grown daughter, Sue, a divorced mother whose life as an American housewife hasn't been what she'd expected. When illness prevents Shoko from traveling to Japan, she asks Sue to go in her place. The trip reveals family secrets that change their lives in dramatic and unforeseen ways.
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big disappointment
- By Kirsten on 04-12-12
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The Opposite of Loneliness
- Essays and Stories
- By: Marina Keegan
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
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Marina Keegan's star was on the rise when she graduated magna cum laude from Yale in May 2012. She had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. Tragically, five days after graduation, Marina died in a car crash. Even though she was just 22 when she died, Marina left behind a rich, expansive trove of prose that, like her title essay, captures the hope, uncertainty, and possibility of her generation.
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Probably buy the book too.
- By Soupergirl on 09-14-15
By: Marina Keegan
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Marlena
- A Novel
- By: Julie Buntin
- Narrated by: Emma Galvin
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
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Story
Everything about 15-year-old Cat's new town in rural Michigan is lonely and off-kilter until she meets her neighbor, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat, inexperienced and desperate for connection, is quickly lured into Marlena's orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blond hair. As the two girls turn the untamed landscape of their desolate small town into a kind of playground, Cat catalogues a litany of firsts - first drink, first cigarette, first kiss - while Marlena's habits harden and calcify.
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A Brilliant, Agonizing Portrait of a Young Woman
- By Sudi on 06-06-17
By: Julie Buntin
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The Untelling
- By: Tayari Jones
- Narrated by: Michele Blackmon
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
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Overall
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Story
Aria is no stranger to tragedy. Fifteen years ago, a family outing took the lives of her father and baby sister, leaving remaining members of this fractured family struggling with their own guilt - real and imagined. At 25, Aria believes she can reinvent herself through her planned marriage with all its promise of a family of her own. Her infertility changes her life as swiftly and irrevocably as the urban landscape around her.
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Don’t waste your time!
- By shasha on 09-18-20
By: Tayari Jones
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When You Call My Name
- By: Tucker Shaw
- Narrated by: Max Meyers
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Film fanatic Adam is 17 and being asked out on his first date—and the guy is cute. Heart racing, Adam accepts, quickly falling in love with Callum like the movies always promised. Fashion-obsessed Ben is 18 and has just left his home upstate after his mother discovers his hidden stash of gay magazines. When he comes to New York City, Ben’s sexuality begins to feel less like a secret and more like a badge of honor. Then Callum disappears, leaving Adam heartbroken, and Ben finds out his new world is more closed-minded than he thought.
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Full impact of a heavy topic while keeping it within the genre.
- By GnomePatronus on 07-31-24
By: Tucker Shaw
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One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
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Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
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Little Earthquakes
- By: Jennifer Weiner
- Narrated by: Johanna Parker
- Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
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Rebecca Rothstein Rabinowitz is a plump, sexy chef who has a wonderful husband, a restaurant that's received citywide acclaim, a beautiful baby girl and the mother-in-law from hell. Kelly Day's life looks picture-perfect. But behind the doors, she's struggling to balance work, motherhood, and marriage, while dealing with an unemployed husband who seems content to channel-surf for eight hours a day....
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More than your average "chick lit"
- By Tricia on 11-13-11
By: Jennifer Weiner
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She's Come Undone
- By: Wally Lamb
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
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Overall
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Performance
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Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Beached like a whale in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi her anxious mother supplies. When she finally rolls into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before really going belly-up.
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Really disappointing narrator!
- By Jessica Williams on 01-21-12
By: Wally Lamb
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What listeners say about The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Nomad 2009
- 03-22-18
Still unsure
I’m still unsure as to whether I enjoyed this book. It wasn’t what I was expecting for sure. I just don’t know if anybody really developed or if they just got older.
I definitely prefer narrations by somebody other than the author.
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- Trish_N
- 06-01-12
Not the best read, nor the best written book
Would you try another book from Aimee Bender and/or Aimee Bender?
First an Foremost, the Author Aimee Bender, should have used a professional voice talent to read the book. Her reading of the book came across as flat and monotone.
Next....Listening to, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, created conflicting emotions for me. I had a hard time with it; hearing about dysfunctional people or families without knowing that there will be a positive outcome is very, very difficult for me. On the other hand, it was much like watching a train wreck, I couldn’t look away.
While not wanting to give away the plot, I will say that it was hard for me to suspend disbelief; I often read fantasy and stories which use magic at their core. To me there were two parts to the story, one of a dysfunctional family delving into the relationships of married parents; the relationship between brother and sister with little in common, and the relationship of the children and their parents. All of the relationships in the story are dysfunctional. The other part of the story is the magical ability of the main character, Rose, who begins the story at the age of 9 and follows through her adolescence and to the age of 22.
While I am glad that I didn’t give up and that I did finish the story it was difficult I would have a very hard time recommending it to others to read or to listen to it. The pace of the story is slow and the characters were often unlikeable. The mother is self-absorbed and wouldn’t win any awards for mother of the year. The father is remote and guarded and not really present in the family. The brother is socially awkward and not written with any depth; he runs through the story more shadowy than any other character. Perhaps, this is deliberate, but I never ‘cared’ about the brother, so his storyline didn’t evoke a response as the plot twists occurred. As a matter of fact, lack of depth of all of the characters is one of the major reasons I wouldn’t recommend this book. All of the characters just seemed flat. By the end of the book the oddities and strangeness of the family makes more sense but it is too little too late.
What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
The most interesting aspect of the story was the concept of intuition regarding inanimate objects.
The least interesting, the character.
Would you be willing to try another one of Aimee Bender’s performances?
Definitely, I am not interested in hearing Aimee Bender reading another offering.
Was The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake worth the listening time?
I didn't feel that it was worth my time, I finished it because, well I always finish books either read or listening.
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- Terry
- 06-15-12
Might have been a great experience
My wife loved this book, so I tried it. Fool that I am, I failed to notice that it was "read by the author." Bender might be a good author, but her reading made the book sound like classified ads.
Authors reading their own books. Isn't there a proposition against that in California?
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1 person found this helpful
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- BeWho
- 08-30-10
Couldn't finish it
It dragged. And dragged. And dragged. I think the story line was unique, but there was nothing there to capture me, nothing that made me want to keep listening. Add with that the reader's bland, intonation-less, and grating voice, and I simply couldn't finish.
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- Candace Glover
- 11-29-18
Sad reader left ya a bit depressed
The storyline was weird and interesting that well written. Left you hanging a lot. But the reader had such a depressed and monotone voice I always was very sad reading his book
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- Sarah Bergstrom
- 04-25-12
Disappointing audiobook performance
What did you like best about this story?
The premise is intriguing and original.
What didn???t you like about Aimee Bender???s performance?
This audiobook should serve as a cautionary tale for authors who want to narrate their own books. There is more to an audiobook performance than simply reading the written words aloud. The flat narration makes the book seem dull and one-dimensional. It's difficult to hear a distinction between characters, and makes an otherwise interesting premise much less engaging.
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- Bonny
- 10-27-11
Interesting idea, poorly executed
I'm not sure it's fair to be irritated with an author because they didn't write the book that I wanted to read, but that may be warranted with The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Rose Edelstein's ability to taste the emotions of the person who prepared her food was initially very interesting to me; I thought of it as a type of synesthesia and was looking forward to seeing how Aimee Bender explored the subject. That plot line gets dropped about halfway through the book; then the real strangeness starts, and the book becomes Rose's brother's story.
The only reason I remotely enjoyed this book was because of this one line, a statement by Rose's mother, "Sometimes, she said mostly to herself, I feel I do not know my children"..."That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit." I've been thinking about this a lot recently as my children have grown up and left home. We feel as if we know them so well as children because we willingly tend to all their physical and emotional needs over 18 years or so, and know so many aspects of their lives and thoughts, but lately I've had to remind myself that I need to know them as the adults they are currently and are becoming
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- Peep's favorites
- 08-10-10
Partucularly Sad Lemons
I wish I had had the benefit of these reviews before I purchased and started listening to this book.
My first bit of irratation come from listening to Aimee Bender's annoying voice. I was at first hopeful that she was just going to read the dedication and intro info but then when I realized that she would be reading the entire book, I became particularly sad.
This sadness has become more pronounced as I continue to listen - I am two hours into the eight hour book and still cannot get interested. The plot is minimal, the writing style unisteresting. If there were a way to get my money refunded, I would ask for it on this book. I think I will just put it to the side and read something else.
Please, listen to the sample and read the other reviews before purchasing this book.
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- Lytrell Strayhorn
- 06-03-23
Not quite what I expected
The story seemed a bit all over the place. Very slow parts. I liked the concept but definitely not what I expected.
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- jj13
- 09-05-23
This was a long novella
Like so many others, I see this as a book that had so much potential that feels wasted. Interesting concept, but it should have been a a short story instead.
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