The Function of Magic in Aimee Bender's "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake"

From Barnes & Noble:

Discovering in childhood a supernatural ability to taste the emotions of others in their cooking, Rose Edelstein grows up to regard food as a curse when it reveals everyone's secret realities.

I finished reading this book yesterday, and loved it. I expected to love it, but the book itself was not what I was expecting, so I'm still pleasantly surprised.

I heard about this book, by description only, about six months ago, in a lower division fiction-writing class – so, a class filled with mostly non-English majors looking to fulfill a General Education requirement. We had split up into groups after reading one of Aimee Bender's short stories, which I can no longer remember. At some point, a girl in my group mentioned that she'd read one of Bender's novels before, but that it was really weird, because it was about a girl who could taste people's emotions through food. So of course, at once, I made a mental note to track down this book. I, the unofficial baker-in-training.

Since I had no idea of the title, it was a happy accident which caused me to stumble over the book in question last week, and I slowly set about reading it. After I had finished reading it, I headed over to the Barnes & Noble website, as per usual, to skim people's reviews. Not shockingly, most of the reviewers didn't get the book. They didn't like the pace and lack of action (it's a character study piece), nor did they understand the magic (it's magical realism).

It's funny, magic. I noticed in a few of my Creative Writing workshop classes that magic, particularly magical realism, is an entirely unfamiliar beast. Fittingly, it is a mythical creature that many people are baffled by. When something isn't cut and dry fiction, but veers into genre, especially anything like fantasy, it's confusing. I find this trend completely fascinating. Creative writers don't lack imagination; they don't even necessarily have contempt for the fantasy genre. It just throws them for a loop. Magical realism is particularly difficult because it walks the line between being normal fiction and being fantasy fiction, especially when magical realism can often be read entirely as metaphor if you feel like it.

(Someone once aptly described the difference between fantasy and magical realism as this: fantasy is how Harry Potter views the wizarding world for the first time. Magical realism is how the other wizards view the wizarding world; they've grown up with it, and so it's normal. Magical realism treats magic as if it is relatively normal. There is little of the traditional fantasy world-building.)

The general reading population has this same confusion over magic. But why? I honestly have no idea. I feel fortunate because I do appreciate a character-driven story (which most creative writers apparently do), as well as magic. Magical realism, in fact, is probably my favorite genre. 

I think I'm starting to veer away from my point, so I'll get back to it. I've been blithering on and on when what I really want to talk about is the magic itself in The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, and why the end didn't make too much sense until I Googled, then pondered, then had one of those epiphany moments. 

THE REMAINDER OF THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK!

So let's talk about the magic. Rose's family has special magical gifts, from her dad's side. She can taste people's emotions in food. Her dad reveals to her, almost at the very end, that his own father could smell people's emotions, and that he likely has some kind of special healing powers. Rose's brother, Joseph, can turn into furniture. But these are not wonderful, helpful, exciting gifts. They are, ultimately, debilitating.

Rose's dad says of his father:

My dad, Dad said, would walk into a store and take a whiff and he could tell a lot about whoever was in the store with that whiff. Who was happy, who was unhappy, who was sick, the works. Swear to God. He used to wear that [strap] on his nose, outside – my dad! Walking down Michigan Avenue with that thing on his face, to get himself a break....

He died at fifty-four, said Dad. Smelled death on himself, then he died (261).

 He had to walk around with a strap on his nose, which I assume inhibited his normal sense of smell, as well as his magical one. It was the only way for him to find any peace, and the implication is that his magical gift drove him to an early death.

Rose's dad says of himself:

Just, I imagine, he said, crossing his arms. That I might be able to do something in a hospital. I don't know what. It's too much, right? That if I went into a hospital something might come up, some skill. That's all. Better not to find out, that's what I say. Keep it simple! Keep things easy! (263)

When Rose first fails to coax him into a hospital with her in order to finally define his gift, she calls him lucky for his gift only working in one location. He can choose to more or less turn his gift "off" by avoiding hospitals – he has never been in a hospital in life, not even for the birth of his two children, or for the hospitalization of either of those children. He knows his gift is debilitating, and disagrees with Rose vehemently when she calls his avoidance tactic lucky.

Rose recalls:

It was true; when Joseph had been checked into the hospital, Dad had stood outside the electric doors for over an hour, trying to take a step forward. Trying, and trying (265).

Instead of the gift itself debilitating him, it is the avoidance of this gift that has harmed his life. It has quite possibly been a contributing factor to the decline of his marriage – since his wife is having an affair. His wife likely thinks that he cannot put his family over his 'foolish' phobia, and so that therefore he must be selfish, and not care enough. I mean, there is a huge list of things that has contributed to Rose's mother needing to have an affair, but I feel like this is one of the bigger ones.

But then, of course, there's Rose, our protagonist and narrator, who discovers at the age of seven that she can taste people's emotions in the foods that they've cooked. And she can't stand it. It is not a happy fairy story; all she tastes – particularly from her mother's cooking – is pain. She survives for all of her teenage years, and many of her early adult years, on factory-packaged junk food:

I was around twelve... [when] I did not know how I would get through the day without that machine at school; I prayed those thank yous to it, and whoever stocked it, and whoever had bought it, every night (292).

Rose basically says that she literally would not have survived without the junk food. Such vending machines are akin to her grandfather's strap, and her father's avoidance of hospitals. This is how she turns her gift off, because all of humanity's emotions are too harmful to experience.

Lastly, of course, there's Joseph. And here's where my epiphany started. I was upset that Joseph chose to remain a chair. Because that means he's dead, technically. I originally thought that the furniture-turning was Joseph's only gift, but I think now that his gift came in two parts. It is understandable that this would never be explained, since Joseph is so reserved and mysterious, particularly to Rose, who is five years younger.

Since all of the other gifted Edelsteins have gifts related to people – sensing people, particularly – it stands to reason that his original gift was like this, too. It would make sense, if he had the ability to sense people's emotions as well. But unlike the rest of his family, he can't turn his sensing off. At the very end, Rose realizes:

Was it so different, the way I still loved to eat the foods from factories and vending machines? ...

Was it so different than the choice of a card-table chair, except my choice meant I could stay in the world and his didn't? (292)

She realizes that Joseph wasn't able to cope with the world at all; it was too much for him, so he had to leave it, because it was the only way. After a little bit of thought, I went back to this passage, and realized that those implications are echoed here, too. It's from that final scene in the hospital between Joseph and Rose, when they see each other for the very last time. Joseph says:

It took time, it had taken almost constant practice. It was good while he was away, but terribly hard when he returned. I've tried many options, he said. I've tried different choices. But the chair, he said, is the best (288).  

The key here is "I've tried many options.... I've tried different choices." I fully believe that there are multiple meanings to this statement. That he's tried not only different furniture choices, as the line explicitly states, but that he's tried different ways of coping with his gift, of living in the world. But, ultimately, "the chair... is the best." He has already told Rose that it does not hurt, and that he "[doesn't] know anything, while [he's] away," or "feel the passage of time" (289). For Joseph, turning into furniture is complete and total escapism. He feels absolutely nothing, which, sadly, is what he needs.

So then, what makes Rose so important, is that even though the magical gifts have destroyed her other family members, it doesn't destroy her. She is the first person in her family to be able to cope with her gifts. After twenty-two miserable years of being stuck, she starts moving forward. She starts eating out at restaurants whose cooks cook with emotions she can enjoy, immersing herself in one French restaurant that makes her happy. She eventually learns to cook there, and after a particularly skilled food tasting, a woman recruits her to help work with at-risk youth. Rose also starts the process of moving out of her parents' house. Slowly, but the end leaves us with the implication that she's going to continue moving forward. Rose finally begins coming into herself, something none of her gifted family members could ever really achieve. Rose is the only one with a shot at happiness.

And how wonderful, that this is the time when even sadness, the most debilitating emotion of all for Rose, becomes slightly transformed. When Rose does a tasting at her French restaurant, this happens:

There is also a tinge of sadness in the cook, I said.

Now [Monsieur] put down his pencil for good, and folded up the crossword.

In us all, he nodded (274).

To me, the implication here is that sadness is a part of human nature. It gives people depth. The utter depression Rose has tasted in other people's cooking is not good, of course, but here, for the first time, sadness is portrayed as perhaps even a positive thing. Rose doesn't remark upon this, so maybe she doesn't even notice it. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I don't think it's a coincidence that this passage comes hand in hand with Rose's turn

So a lot of people seem not to have understood the function of the magic in this book, but I think I do. I hope, anyway. I think in the title, "Lemon Cake" functions as a stand in for humanity. The whole book is about Rose and her family coming to terms with the particular sadness of humanity. Dealing with it on both a personal and an empathetic level until it is no longer debilitating.