Status Updates From The Particular Sadness of L...

I find it weird that the book is written in first person instead of third. The narrator is nine years old and describes things a nine year old would not describe so eloquently. If the narrator would be writing this from memory, it does not make sense all the memories wretched detailed. Just reads weird. Like she describes her brothers hands as beautiful or when she recalls an event in detail, but doesn’t remember 8

This book is going nowhere. I can’t finish it.

You could have given me a million actual guesses and it wouldn’t have come to this.

Maybe Joseph’s superpower is travelling to a different dimension. Maybe he knows something because he’s been in different dimensions.

“ while serving myself in orange juice, made in Florida by workers who were placed by financial worries“ I can believe that she senses emotions from the food that she eats. However, I can’t believe that she can understand why people worry. How could she possibly know that the workers were worried about their finances? this shows a level of maturity that should not exist in a child.

It also occurs to me that the narrator is very, very intelligent and very immature in how she’s able to manipulate people in situations, far beyond to 12 year-old. And yet, she’s supposed to be an average kid, who does average at school.

The first section called food was very good. The second section called Joseph is kind of boring. I also noticed that the narrative voice does not sound like the mind of a child. Even though she is retelling events from her childhood, it should still convey that world view and attitude of a child. That is what makes to kill a Mockingbird so compelling.

I feel like I’m finally over how this is written. I’m reading it a little more easily. George is a gem. 💎

The way dialogue is done is driving me absolutely insane, but the original idea of the story is driving me to keep reading. Reminds me of “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey.

@cassidy another food book!!

I love how this story is taking shape. A peculiar and telling picture is being painted.

"As I drove off, I honked the horn, once, and my father raised a hand."

crying in the corner rn

"We're so proud of you, Mom said, and they stood side by side as I drove away, their smiles sewn up with an edge of fishing line."

"After all, she had birthed us alone, diapered and fed us, helped us with homework, kissed and hugged us, poured her love into us. That she might not actually know us seemed the humblest thing a mother could admit."

I don't want this book to be over :(

“Once again, my salvation looked to any outsider like good and generous daughterliness.”

loving this

Love the subtle depictions of adhd and autism within two pages of one another

“Eight, whispered my cake. You still just want to go back to eight, when you didn’t know much about anything.”

“…It occurred to me that meals were still meals, food still contained with a set beginning and end, and I could pick and choose what I could eat and what I couldn't. And that my father's was a hospital he could drive around entirely, and Grandpa seemed to smell mostly in stores, but what if whatever Joseph had felt every day had no shape like that? Had no way to be avoided or modified? Was constant?”

Really cool parallel with the mom’s carpentry career and Josh’s disappearance, versus Rose and her father both handing out food they don’t finish to people

Guys I can’t lie… I’m not loving it.

It just feels like we’re jumping around a lot and I’m ready for it to end.

This weird little book is so addictive. Bender's writing is incredible and easy to get lost in

Aimee Bender is an underrated gift

Poor Rose, she just makes my heart hurt

Getting a little weird...butni love how she describes events and interactions.

Not loving the random and completely unnecessary R word that was a few pages ago

But I want there to be an ending chapter eventually where Rose and George are in love

“Food is all those substances which, submitted to the action of the stomach can be assimilated or changed into life by digestion. And can thus repair the losses which the human body suffers through the act of living.“

“My father still seemed shockingly unaware of anything that was going on, but based on what I’d tasted, it had occurred to me that inside my mother was some kind of tiny hospital, and my father drove around that one as vigilantly as he drove around the big ones laid out on the map of the city”

Interesting so far.

”We hit the sidewalk, and dropped hands. How I wished, right then, that the whole world was a street”

The narrative voice in this one is just gorgeous!