Aimee Bender is the author of the novels The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake—a New York Times bestseller—and An Invisible Sign of My Own, and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt and Willful Creatures. Her works have been widely anthologized and have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Los Angeles.
“Moving, fanciful, and gorgeously strange.” —People
“One of the year’s highlights. Intense and compelling.” —The
Oregonian
“Marvelous. . . . Few writers are as adept as Bender at mingling
magical elements so seamlessly with the ordinary.” —San Francisco
Chronicle
“A richly imagined, bittersweet tale.” —Vanity Fair
“Convincing and elegant. . . . A novel with a deeply involving
plot, one full of provocative ideas.” —The Boston Globe
“Extraordinary. . . . Not just a deeply felt novel but one of the
most inventive pieces of food writing in recent memory.” —Time Out
New York
“Profound and eye-opening. . . . You feel—that rare and
beautiful gift from a truly great book—woken up and unalone.” —The
Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“Rose is an irresistible narrator: warm, witty and sharply
observant. . . . Exuberant, life-affirming.” —The Miami
Herald
“Oddly beautiful. . . . Will tempt you to see what talented writers
can do when they rip little tears in the fabric of reality.” —The
Washington Post
“The fairy-tale elements in her writing, far from seeming
outlandish, highlight the everyday nature of her characters’ flaws
and struggles. In Ms. Bender’s stories and novels, relationships
and mundane activities take on mythic qualities.” —The Wall Street
Journal
“Charming and wistful. . . . [Rose] studies her world with
the thoroughness of a scientist but records her observations with
the eye and ear of a poet.” —The Atlantic
“The fabulist elements of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake are
stunning, but what makes this novel a keeper is the sheer beauty of
the language Bender uses to describe love.” —NPR, “Books We
Like”
“[The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake] has the narrative momentum
and clockwork plotting of any good mystery, but its bleak whimsy
and clear-eyed rendering of domestic sorrow are Bender’s own. . .
. Splendid.” —The Plain Dealer
“Rose comes of age while unraveling family secrets as strangely
lucid as they are nightmarish. At its core . . . The Particular
Sadness of Lemon Cake encourages us all to make the most of our
unique gifts while still finding a way to live in the so-called
real world.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
“A dreamy novel. . . . This is one of the most pleasant books we’ve
read all year.” —The New York Observer
“Deftly written. . . . There is a . . . sweetness to the book
that turns it into something out of the ordinary.” —St. Louis
Post-Dispatch
“Bender is the master of quiet hysteria. . . . She builds pressure
sentence by sentence. . . . A little hiss of steam comes off the
novel.” —Los Angeles Times
“A very special book.” —The Anniston Star
“Bender doesn’t write of ordinary people. She writes of magical
creations, the things of fairy tales gone awry. . . . Part magic,
part clean prose.” —Denver Post
“If you’ve ever wondered why people have such a hard time looking
in strangers’ eyes as they walk down the street, this book, hard as
it may be to face, is for you.” —LA Weekly
“There’s an evocative power in Bender’s work that lingers with a
reader.” —The Christian Science Monitor
“[Bender] produce[s] stories that make one grateful for being
ordinary.” —The Seattle Times
“[A] gentle, kindhearted novel. There’s a wistful quality to the
almost fable-like tale that’s captured with near perfection in her
understated prose. As in all fine novels, the Edelsteins’ story, in
Aimee Bender’s telling, is one that reflects our own world back to
us in a fresh and revealing way.” —Bookreporter.com
“The ultimate fact is that The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is
probably the strangest book you’ll never want to put down.”
—Pittsburgh Tribune
“Aimee Bender creates a lilting, economical and finally tragic
portrait of what it means to be a child in her exquisite new
novel.” —Chicago Tribune
“Lemon Cake perfectly embodies Bender’s knack for simultaneously
appealing to imagination, emotion, and intellect, combining an
out-of-this-world premise with very much in-this-world characters.”
—Portland Mercury
“Aimee Bender is also something of a sorceress who charges her
stories with pure magic, and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
is an example of what she does best.” —Jewish Journal
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