Book Club: Magical Realism
Thursday, August 22, 6:00 PM
Have you ever started a novel that seems extremely realistic, lifelike and down to earth and all of the sudden the protagonist turns into a cockroach or grows wings and flies away? This may seem absurd, but it’s one of the qualities of the literary genre of magical realism.
This installment of Reading Under the Roof Cloud will take on one of the genre’s contemporary masters, Aimee Bender and her novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein 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 slice. To her horror, she finds that her cheerful mother tastes of despair. Soon, she’s privy to the secret knowledge that most families keep hidden: her father’s detachment, her mother’s transgression, her brother’s increasing retreat from the world. But there are some family secrets that even her cursed taste buds can’t discern.
Join Akron Art Museum education and library staff for an engrossing discussion and a tour of the Real/Surreal exhibition.
