On the day before her 9th birthday, while eating her mother’s lemon cake, Rose Edelstein realises that she has a unique ability – when she eats anything, she can taste the emotions of the person who made the food. In this way she discovers that her apparently happy and contented mother is in fact hiding feelings of sadness and fear.
Soon, all food becomes a chore to Rose – she can’t eat her brother’s toast, and even cookies from the local bakery reveal secrets about people she doesn’t know. Worst of all is realising the true feelings of her family, despite their attempts to hide them. As she grows older, her ‘skill’ sharpens and she is able to tell where each individual ingredient in a meal was grown or produced. If she never really accepts her ability, she somehow learns to live with it. But there are some things that her ability can’t tell her, and eventually she discovers another secret – one which she never could have predicted.
This was such an unusual book. I definitely enjoyed reading it – it was obviously necessary to suspend disbelief, and sometimes I find that hard to do, but in this instance it was not a problem at all (although a storyline involving Rose’s brother Joseph did have me scratching my head at one point). The whole story seems infused with an air of melancholy and dreaminess. It’s narrated by Rose herself, and I thought her character was very well drawn, as were the characters of Rose’s parents and brother. I found it difficult to warm to the mother, but I really liked the father; however my favourite character was George, the best friend of Joseph and the object of Rose’s crush. He was also the only person who Rose felt able to confide in about her secret.
The writing flows well, and this book is actually a very quick read; with more time on my hands I would probably have read it in one sitting. I was eager to find out how it ended, and if it wasn’t the ending I might have hoped for, it was certainly the ending that seemed most appropriate.
One word of warning – there are no speech marks in this book! It didn’t particularly bother me, but I know that some people find this off-putting, and very occasionally it did lead to slight confusion about where Rose’s narration to the reader ended and her dialogue with another character began. However, this did not detract from my enjoyment of the book.
This story was unusual and held my attention throughout – I would definitely read something else by this author.
(Author’s website can be found here.)
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