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“My lover is experiencing reverse evolution.” That is the opening of “The Rememberer”, a story Aimee Bender published in The Missouri Review in 1997, in which a woman watches the man she loves turn into an ape, then a sea turtle, then a salamander, until she lets him go in the ocean. A year later it opened her first book. Bender, who was born in 1969 and grew up in Los Angeles, has worked that way ever since: one impossible fact, told flatly, and then followed through with real feeling. A girl tastes her mother’s despair in a birthday cake; a pumpkin-headed couple raise a son with an iron head. She teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California, where she is a Distinguished Professor. This guide covers her seven key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 key books · 1998–2020 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Aimee Bender has published seven books: three story collections, three novels and a novella. The best known is The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010), a novel about a girl who can taste other people’s emotions in food; her debut, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998), is the best-known collection. Start with Lemon Cake, then go back to the stories, where her method is at its most concentrated.
Where to Start with Aimee Bender
If you want her best-known novel
→ The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010) — the girl who tastes feelings in food.
If you want her short stories at their most famous
→ The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998) — the 1998 debut, with “The Rememberer”.
If you want fairy tales retold
→ The Color Master (2013) — including a prequel to “Donkeyskin”.
If you want the book that was filmed
→ An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000) — adapted with Jessica Alba in 2010.
7 Aimee Bender Books, in Order
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
Her first book, sixteen stories published by Doubleday in 1998 that mix fairy tale with ordinary life. It opens with “The Rememberer”, in which a woman’s lover goes through reverse evolution. It was a New York Times Notable Book of 1998 and spent seven weeks on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list.
An Invisible Sign of My Own
Mona Gray, nineteen, has given up almost everything she loved, from piano to running, since her father fell ill with a mysterious illness when she was ten. She knocks on wood, counts, and trusts only numbers, and takes a job teaching maths at an elementary school. The Los Angeles Times named it a pick of the year; it was filmed as An Invisible Sign (2010), directed by Marilyn Agrelo, with Jessica Alba as Mona.
Willful Creatures
Her second collection, which the New York Times Book Review called “contemporary fairy tales”. In “Ironhead” a couple with pumpkins for heads have a son with a head of iron; “Dearth” involves potato children; another story follows a boy with keys instead of fingers. The Believer listed it among the best books of the year.
The Third Elevator
A short fable first published by the small Madras Press. A swan and a bluebird fall in love against a queen’s decree, and their child hatches from a speckled egg as a cloud and drifts into the sky; the swan goes looking for it, through a world of loggers, sky miners and elevators made of wood, gold and feathers.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
On the eve of her ninth birthday in Los Angeles, Rose Edelstein eats a slice of the lemon-chocolate cake her mother has made and tastes, under the cheerful surface, her mother’s despair. From then on every meal tells her how the person who made it feels. Around her are a distant father and a brilliant, withdrawn older brother, Joseph, who struggles with the world in his own way. It won the SCIBA Award for Fiction from the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association in 2010 and an American Library Association Alex Award in 2011.
The Color Master
Her third collection. The title story is a prequel to the fairy tale “Donkeyskin”, told by an apprentice in a workshop of dyers who match dresses to the sun, the moon and the stars; she is asked to put anger into one for a king who wants to marry his daughter. In “Tiger Mending”, based on a painting by Amy Cutler, a seamstress travels to Asia to sew the skins back onto tigers.
The Butterfly Lampshade
When her single mother is taken to a psychiatric hospital, eight-year-old Francie waits with a babysitter for a train to relatives in Los Angeles. She wakes to find a dead butterfly, matching the ones on the lampshade beside her, floating in a glass of water, and drinks it. Twenty years later she tries to understand that night and two other moments, with a dried beetle and dried roses, that she is sure really happened.
In What Order to Read Aimee Bender
None of her books continue from one another, so there is no series order to follow. They alternate instead between story collections and novels, and the novels are where she tests whether one strange premise can carry a whole life: a girl who tastes feelings, a woman who is certain she once drank a butterfly.
If you like Lemon Cake, read The Butterfly Lampshade next; both are about a girl in Los Angeles with a mother she cannot reach. If you prefer the stories, read the three collections in order and keep The Third Elevator, the shortest and most openly fairy-tale book, for last.
A reading path
1. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010)
2. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998)
3. Willful Creatures (2005)
4. The Color Master (2013)
5. The Butterfly Lampshade (2020)
The years · 1969–2020
Quick facts about Aimee Bender
- Known for
- Aimee Bender is known for fiction in which one impossible event, such as tasting other people’s emotions in food, is told plainly and followed through with real feeling.
- 1969
- Born; grows up in Los Angeles
- Born
- 28 June 1969; a native of Los Angeles
- Education
- University of California, San Diego; MFA in creative writing, University of California, Irvine
- Teaches
- Creative writing at the University of Southern California; Distinguished Professor since 2017
- Family
- Her sister, Karen Bender, is also a novelist and short story writer
- Honours
- Two Pushcart Prizes; Alex Award and SCIBA Award for Fiction for The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
- Adaptation
- An Invisible Sign (2010), with Jessica Alba, from her first novel
The red mark is 2010: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, her best-known novel.
How Aimee Bender Writes: One Impossible Fact, Told Plainly
Bender usually starts from a single impossible premise and states it in the first line, without explanation: “My lover is experiencing reverse evolution. I tell no one.” The rest of the story treats the premise as fact and asks what it would feel like to live with it. Lovers turn into salamanders, children are born with heads of iron, and nobody in the story finds this remarkable for long.
Her influences are the old tellers of fairy tales: she names Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and Oscar Wilde, along with the poet Anne Sexton, who rewrote Grimm in Transformations. The Color Master takes this furthest, with a prequel to “Donkeyskin”, and The Third Elevator is a fable outright, with swans, a bluebird and a queen’s decree.
The strangeness is almost always a way into family. Rose in Lemon Cake and Francie in The Butterfly Lampshade are both girls with mothers they cannot reach, and Mona in An Invisible Sign of My Own organises her life around a father’s illness. The sentences stay short and calm, which is what makes the grief underneath them land.
Watch
Aimee Bender in Conversation with Jessica Handler
Aimee Bender talks with the writer Jessica Handler about her novel The Butterfly Lampshade at an event of Charis Circle, the nonprofit programming arm of Charis Books in Atlanta. From the official Charis Circle channel.
Frequently asked questions about Aimee Bender’s books
How many books has Aimee Bender written?
Seven: three story collections (The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Willful Creatures and The Color Master), three novels (An Invisible Sign of My Own, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and The Butterfly Lampshade) and a novella, The Third Elevator.
What are Aimee Bender’s books in order?
The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998), An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000), Willful Creatures (2005), The Third Elevator (2009), The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010), The Color Master (2013) and The Butterfly Lampshade (2020).
Where should I start with Aimee Bender?
With The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010), her best-known novel. If you would rather start with the short stories, read The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998), beginning with “The Rememberer”.
What is Aimee Bender’s most famous book?
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2010), about Rose Edelstein, who discovers on the eve of her ninth birthday that she can taste the emotions of whoever made her food. It won the SCIBA Award for Fiction and an Alex Award.
What is The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake about?
Rose Edelstein, growing up in Los Angeles, bites into the lemon-chocolate cake her mother made for her ninth birthday and tastes her mother’s despair. The novel follows her into adulthood as every meal reveals what the cook feels, and as her older brother Joseph withdraws from the family in a way of his own.
Has any Aimee Bender book been made into a film?
Yes. An Invisible Sign (2010), directed by Marilyn Agrelo, is based on her novel An Invisible Sign of My Own (2000). Jessica Alba plays Mona Gray, a maths teacher ruled by superstition. It premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October 2010 and opened in American cinemas on 6 May 2011.
What is “The Rememberer” about?
A woman, Annie, watches her lover Ben go through reverse evolution: he becomes an ape, then a sea turtle, then a salamander, and in the end she releases him into the ocean. It first appeared in The Missouri Review in 1997 and opens The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998); it was also included in Ann Charters’ anthology The Story and Its Writer.
What prizes has Aimee Bender won?
Two Pushcart Prizes for short fiction, and for The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake the SCIBA Award for Fiction (2010) and an American Library Association Alex Award (2011). The Girl in the Flammable Skirt was a New York Times Notable Book of 1998.
Is Aimee Bender still alive?
Yes. She was born on 28 June 1969 and teaches creative writing at the University of Southern California, where she has been a Distinguished Professor since 2017.
Is Aimee Bender related to Karen Bender?
Yes, they are sisters. Karen Bender is also a novelist and short story writer.
Footnotes
- Aimee Bender — Wikipedia
- Aimee Bender — USC Dornsife faculty profile
- An Invisible Sign — Wikipedia
- The Rememberer — Wikipedia
- “The Rememberer” — The Missouri Review, 1997
- The calculus of a scared young woman — The Christian Science Monitor, 2000
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“My lover is experiencing reverse evolution. I tell no one.”
— Aimee Bender, “The Rememberer”, in The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (1998), the opening lines
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