What beauties the book contains! There are many pages in it so saturated with warm and lovely intimacies that one reads absorbed

An astonishingly avant-garde novel

I do not claim to be a literary critic, but I know dirt when I smell it, and here is dirt in heaps- festering, putrid heaps which smell to high Heaven

Lawrence was the first literary artist to emphasise the huge importance of sex as a means of human fulfillment

Its questions about marriage and eroticism, grief and the frightening blankness of nature, have made it one of our century's most popular novels

Beautifully written and intriguing...I could not put it down

Intense, strange and incredibly moving, it captures the magic and the romance of the unknown. With nods to both Chocolat and The Time Traveler's Wife, this is a beautifully written book and one that you will want to talk about long after you have finished reading it.

A lovely book, warm and comforting with moments of sadness and brilliantly written

Haunting... Bender's prose delivers electric shocks... Moving, fanciful and gorgeously strange

[A] transformative narrative... powerful

Extraordinary

[Bender] careens splendidly through an obstacle course of pathological, fantastical neuroses... brimming with a zesty, beguiling talent

Bender is the master of quiet hysteria... She builds pressure sentence by sentence

As delightful as its title suggests.

A truly unique exploration of turbulent family relationships and a young girl on the cusp of adulthood grappling with grown-up emotions.

The book initially reads like the familiar tale of a cosy, suburban middle-class LA household concealing frustrated lives behind an outwardly-cheery veneer. But by kicking the narrative left with the surrealist twist of Rose's psychic tastebuds it becomes so much more: an unpredictable meeting of modern magic and melancholic realism.

The book I wish I had written ... it's so clever

Aimee Bender has got that cool, quirky American thing going on. Taking an unlikely premise - a girl who discovers she can taste emotions in food - she transforms it into a lovely, lonesome universal tale.

This is a moving and fantastical tale of the secrets and lies that lurk beneath the surface of a seemingly happy family.

Ultimate weepy foodie book ... fabulous

It's a charming, funny, wistful novel, with serious things to say about feelings people hide and the nature of true nourishment

Lose yourself in a fantastical gastronomical journey ... This novel explores familial love in an unexpected way, and you'll be hooked from the first taste

This emotional and moving tale blew us away with its beauty

It's as beautiful as it is strange. Bender writes such lyrical sentences, you pause over them in wonder. She has an unusual take on life; and makes even the ordinary extraordinary. It's a compulsive page turner. This book is already a best seller in America, and has been embraced by book clubs. I loved it. It's one of those books you don't want to finish - and even when you have - it stays in your mind. Bender has written three previous novels. I intend to savour them all

This novel, in the style of stories like Chocolat, is a dreamy feast of gorgeous writing ... Gently, beautiful, odd, this is a story to sip and savour

An intriguing premise for an original novel about a family and its relationships

Moving and highly original, this book will make you look at food in a whole new light