Okay, home stretch. This is the final matchup of the Morning News Tournament of Books. As of this writing, they've already started judging, and I'm one-for-one. Go me!
Bloodroot by Amy Greene vs. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender
Judge: Catherine George
Bloodroot
I've always been leery of the new Southern Gothic, where hill-country characters go on and on about the quirks of their ancestors. Throw in country backwoods mythology, and I'm completely lost. I read the sample on Amazon, in which five characters were introduced in the first paragraph; two pages later the narrator changed to a kid with a horse. It was a nice little slice of melancholy southern gothic, it may have been wonderful but I'm not a fan of it.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender
This is a classic gimmick book: an adolescent girl gains the gift of 'tasting' emotions in food cooked by other people. Reviews are good, and Aimee Bender is a quirky but very talented writer. The gimmick is okay, and either a perfect symbol of the burdens of female bonding and adulthood, or a cheap trick that wears thin after one hundred pages. You, intrepid reader, get to decide.
Judge Catherine George was picked via a contest from among The Morning News's regular readers to judge the first round of the Tournament. She is a lawyer and aspiring novelist from British Columbia.
Summary: This is a round where I am definitely not the target audience for either book. Of these two, I am more interested in Aimee Bender. The judge's Canadian background lends me to think she'll be drawn to Bloodroot as an entomologist is drawn to a newly discovered millipede. However, Bender is a Big Name, meaning she can produce the big payoff on demand. This is a toss-up, and in a toss-up, go with sales figures.
Winner: The Peculiar Sadness of Lemon Cake. Mmm... Lemon Cake.
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