A Slice of LEMON CAKE
Looks like next week’s breakout novel will be The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, which is not only a media darling, but a librarian favorite, thanks to the efforts of Marcie Purcell in library marketing at Random House, who has been touting it at recent buzz panels. Booksellers like it too: the ABA lists it as an Indie Next Pick for June.
In the new issue of People magazine, it gets four out of four stars, and is a People Pick, with a review by Caroline Leavitt, who by coincidence spoke at the AAP Librarians Lunch at Book Expo yesterday.
At 8, Rose Edelstein discovers she has a horrifying talent: In every food she consumes, she tastes the emotions of the people who prepared it. This means encountering hidden darkness, including her own mother’s sorrow and loneliness…. Moving, fanciful and gorgeously strange, this is a novel that asks the unselling question: how much do we really want to know about the ones we love?’
Entertainment Weekly is also positive, if a bit less enthusiastic,
Lemon‘s story never fully coalesces, but it still lingers long after, like the hum of a half- forgotten melody.
And, achieving the book review trifecta, it is also one of USA Today‘s critics’ picks for the summer.
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Other Major Titles On Sale Next Week
The beginning May 31 is a breather between two big titles from Random House, Inc. — Steig Larsson‘s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest from Knopf last week and Justin Cronin‘s The Passage, from Ballantine, the week of June 7.
For an overview of other major titles coming next week, arranged by how they are selling, go to Barnes&Noble’s Coming Soon. No surprise, the top of that list is Stephenie Meyer‘s The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. (Due to the frentic pace of BEA, we’ve truncated our usual rundown of major titles).