Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today my guest is Amy Bender.

Her book, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, is published by Doubleday.

It's narrator Rose Edelstein's ninth birthday,

and she tastes the cake her mother has baked,

her favorite, a lemon-layer cake with chocolate frosting,

and it just tastes, well, sad, terribly sad.

Rose can barely swallow it. She knows from the taste that her mother is miserable.

She tries to explain that she suddenly finds herself able to taste emotions in the food she

eats, sorrow, joy, anger, misery. She tries to tell others,

they take her

for tasting expeditions

to bakeries,

and they

discovered that yes,

she can, in fact,

in a particular bakery

...