book:the particular sadness of lemon cake

so cross recommended this book to us, and i decided that i should read it. because it seems fun and quirky, like cross. and she is awesome. :)
so basically i really really love this book--it's a very unique style although i'm like "aimee why you use no quotation marks" all the time because it gets confusing when there are no quotation marks. but it's stylistic, i guess? and consistent, so whatever.

of course, favorite line!

"he used big words too early, saying things like, i must masticate now..."
basically, i just laughed my head off and people on the bus looked at me like i was crazy. and now i want to say this every time i'm going to chew and see how many weird looks i get.

"oh, your father, she said, leaning her hip against the counter. your father is a big strong stubborn gray boulder. she laughed.
and me? i asked, grasping, for the last time.
you? baby, you're--
i stood still. waiting.
you're--
she smiled at me, as she folded the blue-and-white-checked dish towel. you're seaglass, she said. the pretty green kind. everybody loves you, and wants to take you home.
...it was a compliment, i kept thinking to myself... it's supposed to make you feel good."
even though this was a heartbreaking scene between rose and her mother, i absolutely loved it--you can obviously pick up on the subtext between rose and her mother, figuring out that rose's mother doesn't exactly love her daughter in the same way she loves joseph or her husband, but she tries. and fails miserably, which rose notes.

so far, this book is great. the only complaint i do have about it is the fact that rose is only in third grade. the narrator's tone is so old and jaded that it would've been more believable if rose were in high school. or maybe college. it's just hard to reconcile the tone with the character herself, so she's... not really believable to me.