The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

This book is a little bit twisted, strange, and inexplicable at times, but Aimee Bender's mellifluous prose is enough of a reason to read this book. Each paragraph is like a perfect bite of casserole, texture, flavors and satisfaction on your fork. I found myself re-reading sentences, just to enjoy them again.
The main character is a young girl, who finds at age nearly-nine, that she can suddenly taste the base feelings of the creator of the food, in fact, the exact location of the ingredients and the emotion of all who have touched the ingredients that go into a food. The experience is no pleasure and she finds herself unable to properly understand, or explain how this changes her life. The family dynamics were always a little off, but she tastes too much neediness and solitude in the lovingly crafted meals of her mother, or the hasty, hollow nothingness snacks of her brother. And strives to find meals made in factories, or meals made by someone with uncomplicated sadness.
In the book, the mother has an affair that the girl discovers because she can taste the thrill and the guilt in the pot roast. She does some kissing in high school and there is a sentence about losing virginity in the college years, but sex is not a main theme here. There are one or two common profane words, but the majestic, simple, feast of the prose is worth hazarding for the older child. My 15 year old read the first few chapters aloud in the car on the way to the library, and we laughed and mused and enjoyed together. Because of its popularity, I had to take it back, but she was hooked and wants to get herself on the request list.