CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW of THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE by AIMEE BENDER

BOOK REVIEW by CHRISTINE TRZYNA c 2010

According to the Library of Congress this book is classified first under TASTE, then FAMILY SECRETS, and then PSYCHOLOGY.

But as I read it, it was clear to me that PSYCHOLOGY is the pivotal issue, in a family of members who all have little quirks or serious mental problems; we as readers are struggling through the shades of gray to DEFINE what is wrong with this one or that, which confuses us because we don't know how much we can believe, though we want to believe, through the narrator, Rosie, whose gift or curse is that she can taste other people's emotions through the food they prepare. Maybe the story as Rosie's proves that it is Rosie who is cracked.

Here are the FAMILY SECRETS not secret to us readers: A mother who takes a long time to find and accept her talent after much dabbling, who can't openly admit a cold and distant marriage, an affair that may be preserving her and her family somehow, or that she has a seriously mentally ill son, Joseph, mother's hope being what it is.

Joseph makes it through school as a science nerd with one friend in the world but is never property diagnosed or given help. He "disappears" after many a trial run. Then there's the father who is a successful lawyer but can't step a foot in a hospital, not even for the birth of his children, who hides his thoughts and feelings, without hiding in a bedroom like his son does. And the far-away mother/mother in law, who may be loosing her mind, and who no one visits or invites in, sends boxes full of discards, emptying her home bit by bit. Rosie is a daughter who feels obligated to let the life of a college student pass her by, though that is her heritage, because her brother can't achieve his goals and is railroaded to the community college instead of Cal Tech.

Was it intended or is this book an accidental case of magic realism?

The Particular Sadness of Lemon cake was sad. And it held my interest from beginning quirk to facing the reality that the family can't.


The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
C 2010 Aimee Bender
Doubleday is the publisher

CHRISTINE TRZYNA BOOK REVIEW of MACKENZIE PHILLIPS HIGH ON ARRIVAL

BOOK REVIEW by Christine Trzyna C 2010

Maybe in part, because I recall the urgency of her voice, I feel the tone of Mackenzie Phillips' memoir is incessantly passionate till exhaustion. As I passed this book on to others to read, I warned them, "Be prepared to be devastated." Do memoirs ever help others really? (I think sometimes they do.) Was this one intended to imply forgiveness to one's self and others? Isn't forgiveness over-rated?

Reading this one, I remembered years ago I read the memoir of Mackenzie's dad, John Phillips, famous writer of hit songs sung by the early 1960's quartet The Mamas and the Papas. I was stunned by his calm unapologetic amorality. He shrugged his shoulders about what an unmoved Papa he had been. He had not protected his daughter.

John Phillips, who used up most of his song writing money on drug addiction, had other children - a son, and two daughters by Michelle Phillips, Mackenzie's sisters, who may not have had the same experience of good ol dad. But maybe it's biology; whatever was amiss with John Phillips that his moral compass kept spinning was passed on to just one. "The problem," was and is, apparently drug addiction. But maybe drug addiction is too convenient and superficial the excuse. Mackenzie has had a horrible life, despite being supplied with economic and opportunity wealth, and despite all the pain she describes which we imagine she FELT, she did not know better to not participate in (drug fueled) incest as an adult with her father.

None of us who read this book believe Mackenzie will stay off drugs and a few of us felt irate that she did not know better.


High on Arrival was written by Mackenzie Phillips with Hilary Liftin
It's a Simon Spotlight Entertainment book
C 2009 Shanes Mom Inc.

MERCE CUNNINGHAM, Dancer and Choreographer QUOTE

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no painting to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls." - Merce Cunningham


Quoted in the December 28 2009 - January 4 2010 TIME magazine, page 150.