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osprey_archerI ought to have done my homework this weekend, but I did not. I read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake instead. It's a wonderful book: a page turner, despite having only a wisp of a plot, with elegant prose and vivid, layered characters.
These characters are the great triumph of the book but also its great frustration. Over the course of the book one grows to know these characters very well, to know in particular Rose's family with the kind of intensity that one only knows people one has lived with - but without ever understanding them. Their pasts, their desires, their inner worlds remain inaccessible.
The main character, Rose, can sense people's emotions when she eats food she cooks, but despite this ability, deep understanding of the people in her life eludes her. The problem doesn't seem to lie in Rose, but to be inherent in the human condition. Though moments of warmth and connection brighten the story, it's suffused with delicate melancholy: ultimately, every man is an island.
It's a book about the spaces between people, the gulfs in relationships which remain unbridged and maybe are unbridgeable. It's a story about emptiness. Satisfaction remains elusive, both for the characters and the reader - I at least found the ending frustratingly inconclusive - but that's a feature, not a flaw.
These characters are the great triumph of the book but also its great frustration. Over the course of the book one grows to know these characters very well, to know in particular Rose's family with the kind of intensity that one only knows people one has lived with - but without ever understanding them. Their pasts, their desires, their inner worlds remain inaccessible.
The main character, Rose, can sense people's emotions when she eats food she cooks, but despite this ability, deep understanding of the people in her life eludes her. The problem doesn't seem to lie in Rose, but to be inherent in the human condition. Though moments of warmth and connection brighten the story, it's suffused with delicate melancholy: ultimately, every man is an island.
It's a book about the spaces between people, the gulfs in relationships which remain unbridged and maybe are unbridgeable. It's a story about emptiness. Satisfaction remains elusive, both for the characters and the reader - I at least found the ending frustratingly inconclusive - but that's a feature, not a flaw.
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Date: 2011-01-10 11:04 pm (UTC)I think she felt she didn't have the right to ask. But I don't understand why not.
The binoculars bit was adorable. But it's probably just as well he didn't cook for her! Who knows what she would have found out? I think they managed to create their weirdly sweet relationship because there was this distance between them - unlike between Rose and her mother, who crowded her (even leaving out all that unplanned emotional sharing in meals).
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Date: 2011-01-12 12:51 am (UTC)I'm thinking about rereading the book soon. You and Beth were both reading it over the weekend and I was actually jealous.
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Date: 2011-01-12 02:39 am (UTC)