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Excellent book. I sat down and read it within two days. It is about this young girl who discovers she can taste what people are feeling in their food that they have cooked. She sadly has to grow up much too fast when she learns hidden secret emotions in her mothers cooking and the community at large. I really enjoyed the whole theme of so much hidden feelings in people that you would never notice on the surface but that people could push into something else such as cooking or baking. I also real
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I can handle Haruki Murakami's magical realism, because I know he is playing off of aspects of Japanese culture and mythology, as well as his own fictional peccadilloes that I can relate to, yet Ms. Bender's magical realism centers around food and some type of sci-fi that just didn't go down easily for me. I know the heightened "powers" are supposed to be illustrative of social and family issues, but heightened emotional intuition wasn't enough to carry the story for me and the older brother's a
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Oh, I just love Aimee Bender. It's been a decade since I last read her, but those earlier characters are vivid and these new ones will stick with me for a while. Her stories have a strange and fantastical twist -- In this one a character can taste in anything she eats the hidden emotions of the person who cooked it. Bizarre, compelling, and a lovely quick read. Sigh, now back to grad school reading.
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Comments from the author about why she doesn't use quotes to highlight the dialog..."Yeah, I often don't and I don't in this book. Kind of aesthetic choice in certain way because I like how it looks, but it also feels like that line between her internal and external world is a little blurry, which I think is kind of her deal." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st...
Her comments also seem to explain the way the brother blurs and disappears.
I didn't like the book. I don't recommend the book. I d ...more
Her comments also seem to explain the way the brother blurs and disappears.
I didn't like the book. I don't recommend the book. I d ...more

story of a family with extraordinary "gifts" which verges on the supernatural. A beautifully written book which explores familial relationships, the things we hide, the things we don't say.
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I've never read her before.
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I loved this book, but the odds are, that you won't :)
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I'm not quite sure what I was expecting coming into this one, and coming out of it I'm not quite sure that I even understand it. Bender writes very well and you feel for Rose in a deep way, but it sort of sputters out to nothing in the end. I would come bad to Bender again, but probably in a short story format that tightens the focus just a hair.
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Jun 07, 2010
Tracyene
marked it as to-read

Jul 19, 2010
Shannon Wallner
marked it as to-read

Jul 20, 2010
Stephanie
marked it as to-read

Jan 12, 2012
Liz
marked it as to-read

Jan 02, 2013
Brenda
marked it as to-read

Jan 17, 2013
Dana Arbelaez
marked it as to-read

Aug 26, 2013
Ginger
marked it as to-read