The New Year brings a ton of great things, like the renewal of my data plan. Hello 5GB for the rest of January and goodbye peasant days of asking for wifi passwords everywhere I go. This by no means mean that I'll start replying messages punctually, but there is some hope.
In trying to survive on 0.25gb of data for the last week of December, I've learnt to live on the wifi generously provided by MRT stations on the way to work. Jurong East, Clementi, Outram Park, Raffles Place and City Hall offer pretty sweet connections - you're welcome.
Anyway, to keep myself from mindlessly scrolling through Facebook/Snapchat/Instagram/the world wide web, I started reading my Kindle again and devoured
"The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" by Aimee Bender. And of course you haven't seen me talk about a book here because hey I barely passed IB English, what with the book analyses and Shakespeare and crap but there's a first for everything and NEW YEAR NEW ME so ya.
It's a complex book to say the least because the story doesn't flow in a chronological order and the events that occur are somewhat abnormal. It revolves around Rose, who at the age of 9 realises that she can taste feelings in the food she eats - the feelings of those who pick it, who prepare it, who cook it.
After pouring through the book I Googled almost immediately for reviews, for answers, for something to reassure me that my conclusions made sense. And what I found were book reviews who went on about how it was a waste of time, incoherent, messy, no real plot - when I thought it was written
so beautifully. So tender, from the mother's dialogue, so naive yet straightforward from Rose's point of view and so wonderfully described, all the lumps and swarms of emotions. There were gaps in the story of course, but gaps that could have been filled if one took the time to re-read the book and notice all the hints Bender left behind. Honestly there was S O much foreshadowing and symbolism that the others missed in their haste to find something "
delightful" to "
meet my expectations".
All the elements of "special skills" aside, the novel flows in a realistic manner - from the perspective of the youngest child who becomes a teenager and attempts to find herself, a dad who tries to live up to the expectations of his wife and society, a wife who tries to live up to her
own expectations, and a son who constantly bears the weight of his family and friends on his shoulders without them knowing.
The irony through all this is that Rose and her brother (Joseph) struggle silently with the skill they've inherited on their paternal side, their father does all he can to not face it - while the mother, void of any of these "special skills", yearns to find a skill that she likes - bouncing through phases of ceramics, sociology, baking and finally carpentry. That despite all the oddities they have in common, they operate as individual units who do not communicate.
I do think most readers should've known they were up for a rough ride when the story began with a zesty lemon cake slapped on with sweet chocolate for a 9-year old's birthday celebration - the beginning of all the foreshadowing - that underneath the smiles and positivity the family radiated was something entirely different.
Bloody hell though, thinking about this book has made me so hungry.
[
After thought: was this book maybe just written by a spiteful sister who found her brother so useless, she decided that the most use he could ever be, was to just become a chair?? idk but MAYBE, right?]
