The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother—her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother—tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.

The curse her gift has bestowed is the secret knowledge all families keep hidden—her mother’s life outside the home, her father’s detachment, her brother’s clash with the world. Yet as Rose grows up she learns to harness her gift and becomes aware that there are secrets even her taste buds cannot discern.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is a luminous tale about the enormous difficulty of loving someone fully when you know too much about them. It is heartbreaking and funny, wise and sad, and confirms Aimee Bender’s place as “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language” ( San Francisco Chronicle ).

《檸檬蛋糕的特種憂傷》是美國小說家艾米‧班德的新作。她以短篇小說聞名，深受王爾德、安徒生、格林兄弟等影響，擅於塑造超現實的情節或角色，藉此表現扭曲的欲望、愛與失落。班德的成名作《穿著可燃裙子的女孩》（The Girl in the Flammable Skirt）收錄系列諸如此類的故事，是蟬聯《洛杉磯時報》排行榜七週的暢銷書，也是《紐約時報》1998 年度選書。兩年後，她發表首部長篇小說《我的隱形記號》（An Invisible Sign of My Own），是《洛杉磯時報》該年度選書。

《檸檬蛋糕的特種憂傷》是班德醞釀十年的全新長篇力作，被出版社 Doubleday 視之為她的突破之作（breakout novel）。今年六月在美國上市後，除了獲選獨立書商協會的當月選書，更締造她出道至今最佳暢銷成績，登上紐約時報、獨立書商協會和丹佛郵報等排行榜，短短三週緊急加印六次，並迅速售出德國、法國、義大利、荷蘭和日本版權。