Lemon

by Cordelia Strube

Longlisted for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize, "Lemon" is the story of a teenaged girl with the numbers against her: three mothers, one deadbeat dad, one cancer-riddled protege, two friends, one tree-hugging stepbrother and a 60 percent average. The adults in her life are all mired in self-centeredness and the other kids are busy getting high, and she just can't be bothered to fit in.

Genres: Canada, Fiction, Young Adult, Contemporary, Coming Of Age, Mental Health

260 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 14, 2005

About the author

Read an interview and an excerpt of Cordelia's new novel, On the Shores of Darkness, There Is Light, in Numéro Cinq Magazine: http://goo.gl/9KOheD

Watch a video of Cordelia interacting with students at York University's Canadian Writers in Person here: https://youtu.be/7548Yv5E5qI

Cordelia Strube is an accomplished playwright and the author of nine critically acclaimed novels, including Alex & Zee, Teaching Pigs to Sing, and Lemon. Winner of the CBC literary competition and a Toronto Arts Foundation Award, she has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Book Award, the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Prix Italia, and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Strube is a two-time finalist for ACTRA’s Nellie Award celebrating excellence in Canadian broadcasting and a three-time nominee for the ReLit Award. She lives in Toronto.

Reviews

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have given a full 5 stars if not for the end of the novel, which wasn't bad I just wanted a little more from it. I understand people felt she was too mature and read more like an adult than a teenager. I have mixed emotions there. Some felt the terrible things that happened to her were too many and therefore ridiculous but that isn't so. There are real people (young, old and in between) that tragedy seems to nest in. Lucky are those of us that tragedy only visits once, or not at all. I do realize her views were mature, that she is jaded as only the elderly seem to be after a lifetime of disappointment but I did see flashes of immaturity as well, which made her character realistic. A child wouldn't always know what to do or chose to help when something terrible is happening, even to a friend. We all like to believe people always help each other but teens do have a tendency to just 'walk away' or cover things up. In parts of this novel, that is where she showed her age. I imagine after a lifetime of being let down and severely screwed up by adults, someone would be bitter and also able to see her fellow peers through the eyes of wisdom. I loved it. Is it dark? Yes. But people are missing the point. Limone (lemon) looks to these horrible stories to remind herself that as tragic as her own life seems, there are others far far worse. She says as much in the novel. That is why she incessantly talks about horrors of the past and present. If you want to be cheered up, to read a happy ending with a wedding and picket fences I suggest you do not read this. There is love in the novel-in her ex-stepmother, even if she is a mess herself and rightly so. I was charmed by this dark read.

[Pam Bustin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lemon will break your heart.
I love this girl.
I KNOW this girl.

Heard an interview with Cordelia Strube on CBC radio and ran to my techno-gizmo to put a hold on the ebook at the library.

Glad I did!

I hereby declare LEMON the first book of my 2013 Feminist Reads Challenge - hosted by Sara over at The Hiding Spot .

Lemon is a wise-cracking, snarky smart girl who is incredibly lonely. As with most smart-arsed teenagers, she took a while to grow on me.

As I began to read the book, it felt like she was just sort of shambling around. Rambling around, being smart, knowing stuff, observing the world. A well read, but slightly annoying kid who has taken some time to really THINK about things. Politics. The state of the world. Humans.

Couldn’t help but think back to that other roaming, rambling, shambling teenster -- Holden Caulfield.

They are both worth spending time with.

I’ve read a few reviews on here that have trouble believing that so many “horrible things” could happen to one teen-aged girl. The old “It’s just not very realistic” thing.

Hmmmm.
They are so lucky, aren’t they? Those reviewers.
To live in a world where the things that happen to Lemon and her friends are “just plain UNbelievable.” Lucky lucky them.

Did that sound snarky?

Yeah well. I used to be a smart-arsed teen and now I’m a snarky old broad.

All I mean to say is... I do think these things happen. To more of us than... well...

They happen.

‘Nuff said.

I shan't go on about the book. You can find blurbs hither and yon.
Let me just say, Lemon will stick with me.
In a good way.

I like to envision her and Treeboy traipsing around the world with their backpacks on.

Yeah. That’s cool.
Go Lemon!

I’m going to seek out some more of Cornelia Strube’s work.
She tickles my fancy.

Cordelia Strube

And for my own work, I take the following from this read:
Do not flinch.
Tell it true.

Thank you Cornelia Strube for sharing Lemon with us.

[Violet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't want to put it down. I didn't want it to end.

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tart and zesty, Cordelia Strubes Lemon offers an unusual coming of age story. Limone, aka Lemon, our 16 year old heroine has observed the chaos and the hypocrisy firsthand. "Personally, " she observes, "I think telling the truth is overrated." p18

"Weapons aren't the issue. Sick minds is" p34 she concludes.
"All that killing over religion makes no sense. I guess the point is, it wasnt about religion but control...." p47 "You're expected to live in a virtual world, to lose yourself in technology and shut the fuck up" p210


With such a grip on reality, Lemons fantasy is a rational world and there are some heartbreaking scenes in this hard-ass book. Is it too much to wish for a sequel, for I want to know what happens when Lemons irrepressible compassion allows her to step into the next phase of her life.

[Lena · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just could not buy this, the main character did not ring true to me and the other characters were cardboard. Many scenes felt very repetitive. There was a grain of a good character development in Lemon, but she would have been more credible, with her musings and knowledge of literature, as a woman, rather than a teen-aged girl-outcast.

[Vivaval · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very well written, but this book is a real downer; Lemon's life just goes from bad to worse. I found it hard to read.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

And so I finally come to the ENDING, where renewal is possible, Lemon learns and consolidates, is cynical and hopeful, remembers Kadylak without as much pain, and moves on as does her mother.
"She's [Drew, her step mother] determined to come into the terminal with us even though Vaughan has been a world traveller since he was twelve. She parks and we check our baggage then sip burnt coffee with the airport drones around us. She has fussed over me for twenty-four hours, made certain that my backpack contains everything a girl on her first transatlantic voyage could possibly require. I wait for her to ask me to promise to write.
'I'm worried about you,' I say.
'Don't worry about me.'
'Worry about me, Vaughan says.
'We never worry about you,' Drew says.
Beside us a sagging woman announces that she has lost eighty pounds and asks her scrawny companion's advice regarding what hats to wear now that her face is thinner. 'I like that sixties look,' she says. 'You know those little peaked hats? Those are cute. Would I look good in one of theme?'
Vaughan holds both our hands. 'Time to go or you'll be late for your interview.'
'Yes.' She stands, unfamiliar in her still loosely fitting principal clothes. Gone are the polka dots and the straw gardening hat. 'Take care of each other,' she says, hugging him and then me. She feels thin but alive, an animal strengthened by her injury. I don't let her go because I'm afraid she'll disappear, or die on me. 'You'll be fine,' she whispers in my ear. She pulls away without asking me to promise to write. She digs in her purse for her car keys and I can tell this is hard for her, that pushing us away is another act of courage.
'You're allowed to cry,' he tells her.
'Oh, stop it,' she says. 'I'm gone.' And she is, sharply in her pumps, soon to be swallowed by the crowds and sliding doors. It is only when she is out of sight that I realize she is my mother."

Things begin to work out, even Lemon's memories of Kadylak.
"...We sit on a bench, me in the middle as always. She turns her face toward the sun; she who spent months indoors is rediscovering Mother Earth. She crosses one leg over the other and swings her foot. 'It's hard to be miserable in June,' she says, licking her Cherry Garcia.
It is hard to be miserable with blossoms abounding. I turn my face toward the sun and tell myself she's [Kadylak] up there, free of pain, building houses with doors in case someone nice comes to visit."

Lemon is in despair. She tries but does not succeed to end it. Brilliant, powerful, incredibly insightful and gorgeous prose.
"Starting to breathe the carbon monoxide finally. Slow going with a low-emissions vehicle. Still not drugs kicking in. Not like in the movies. It try the radio again. Céline Dion yowling. I switch it off. Slide my fingers into the tiny slippers. The preemies are constantly in crisis, constantly being resuscitated. Let them die, why can't they die? The parents stand on the periphery, believing the doctors are helping, not torturing, not disabling their beloved baby. Why life at any cost? Why can't we die? Who says we have to put up with this shit day in and day out, these lies, these betrayals? My eyes and throat are burning. I'm so thirsty. So tired. She was so tired. Where's the man in black? Come get me, you fucker. I'm so thirsty. So tired. Fly me to the moon."

Good feminist analysis of Jane Eyre. There is a lot in that story, more needs to be written.
"What's really scary about the Jane/Rochester thing is that eve after it's proven that he lied to her, she's worried about what he thinks of her. She keeps responding to his moods, his outbursts, lets him yammer on about how wronged he was by crazy Bertha ad her father. Not once does old Jane say, 'You made your own bed, now like in it. And stop calling me Janet!'"

Here is some wisdom about the world, children.
"...You have to wonder if all children were loved, I mean really loved not just owned, controlled, spoiled and gloated over, we'd have a better world."

Here is a good question, and understandable, really.
"You have to wonder why the Muslims and Jews, since they've both been persecuted forever, can't get it together and form an alliance and blast the Christians. If they bombed the Christians instead of each other, they could take over the world. The way I see it, Christians have been top dog way too long. ..."

This is clearly the truth in these days where lock downs happen regularly. Yesterday (03Nov15), in fact, there were evacuations in multiple schools in Quebec and parts of Ontario because of an email bomb threat. Other times, there are lock downs because of threats of a person with a gun, and yet they get in anyway.
"I don't know who came up with the idea that kids are safer in schools than on the street. You can escape on the streets, climb a tree or something. Here you're trapped. ..."

Vaughan's rant about protecting old-growth woods is particularly evocative in light of the book I'm currently reading, this Changes Everything by Naomi Klein. But it is also deep and powerful in its own right. Here is what I need to be doing.
"Vaughan doesn't respond and I know his tree-coloured eyes are focused above and beyond her.
'It was an 800-year-old Douglas fir,' he says. 'You can't replant a 1000-year-old forest. We're destroying something we don't understand.'
If you think about it, those trees have witnessed every ruthless, selfish, greedy, destructive human act since whitey started having his way around the place. Maybe that's why whitey's determined to cut them down. The trees know too much."

Absolutely spectacular description. Vaughan is a tree hugger, an environmentalist, a tree supporter, protector. The description is apt and beautiful.
"'Don't worry about it,' Vaughan says. He has green eyes; I've never seen truly green eyes before. His skin's weathered from exposure, making the whites of his eyes look really white and the green of his irises even greener. I see trees in them, ponds and frogs, moss."

I collect pennies. I like the historical view that Lemon takes on what the meaning a coin can contain.
"...When we were in Brownies, I collected pennies to earn a Brownie badge. I've kept it up because I want to have a penny for as many years as possible. My oldest penny is from 1939. I like holding it and thinking about some mother holding it in 1939, listening to the wireless about Herr Hitler, worrying that sonny boy will have to go to war and get his legs blown off. I like knowing that she's dead and that her son's dead and that the penny has changed hands millions of times since then. Hands that belonged to people who were just as freaked out about something or other. There's always something to freak out about but the penny keeps going."

Girls change when they got older. They become less themselves and more about others, boys mostly (and that sometimes carries on throughout a woman's life). I love that Lemon still knows this. I wish I had known it; I wish I had been able to do cartwheels even then. How would I be different now?
"We used to talk about other things than sex and guys. We used to have confidence. We spun cartwheels and handstands. We got A's in math."

Strube presents wisdom in the children whose lives are changed forever by cancer. It's heart wrenching, but beautiful.
"...Kadylak's a big believer in 'tomorrow,' which is wild considering she's got cancer. 'It'll be different tomorrow,' she says. She never says, It'll be better tomorrow. Just different."

Lemon may be struggling with her own identity, her relationship with her mothers, her adolescence, but she's clear about her relationship with the cancer kids at the hospital where she volunteers. She is present, loving and thoughtful with them.
"The parents can be a problem, freaking out where the kids can hear them. The parents check their brains when they step through the hospital doors, morph into emoting blobs in the elevator. I always ask them to fuss and blither in private because their children don't want to hear about dying, they want to party. Sometimes they're too weak to do much so I perform puppet shows by their beds, the more violent the better. The girls always want a wedding at the end. The boys want everyone blown up. I tell them somebody has to live to keep the human race going. 'Why?' they ask, which is a good question."

[Larry Singleton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this a lot. The thing I found particularly great about this book is that it was published just over 10 years ago, and the protagonist surprisingly seems to be very collapse aware. You could probably just chalk that up to the character being a precocious, funny, cynical Holden Caulfield type, but in the last 3 years alone we've seen all kinds of dark shit in the world, and the character is actually quite right about a lot of her complaining. The book feels sort of ahead of its time, and I'm glad I accidentally discovered it (in a book sale at a hospital, of all places).

[ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

if someone put a gun to my head and said, write a freudian analysis for any book of your choosing, i’d pick this novel for no reason other than it would be full of such content that i won’t lack for evidence to analyze. and since i’m such a sucker for psychoanalysis, and since this book is just rife with such and such issues, not to mention it’s not slow, not hesitant in its ending, it’s a match made in heaven.

[Barbara McEwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars - Ooof, not sure how many will connect with feeling so messed up and angry and hurt but I sure did. There is something real about Lemon in how she can both go out of her way to help some people while ignoring some and downright hurting others. Some truth nuggets here about being a teenager and an adult. Not for the faint of heart.

[Marianne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sad story about a young girl, that no one really cares for. She puts up blocks to cover up her worries..

[Debi Boychuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars ⭐️

[Lemoncakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange book in a very good way. The character Lemon is interesting and has a fresh teenage perspective on her miserable life.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Why should you care?’ I ask.

‘Unlike you, Lemon, I like to meet guys.’

‘Do you actually want their dicks up in your snatch, Ross?’ I ask. ‘Do you get some kind of power surge when they grab your tits or do you just want to be loved?’

‘You should talk. Everybody says you’re a dyke.’

‘That’ll keep ‘em off me.’

We used to talk about other things than sex and guys. We used to have confidence. We spun cartwheels and handstands. We got A’s in math.

‘Lemon’s saving herself for the ghost of Cary Grant,’ Tora says.


***


From the back of the book: “The numbers are against Lemon: three mothers, one deadbeat dad, one cancer-ridden protégé, two friends, one tree-hugging stepbrother and a 60 percent average.” In short, Lemon is quirk personified in book form—a collection of offbeat, sometimes random, often antagonizing, vacant, or difficult to crack individuals who pass in and out of Lemon’s life to varying degrees of dissatisfaction, destruction, and death.

Cordelia Strube’s writing is tight and unapologetic. Lemon has the pacing of a theatre piece with a noticeable Whedon-esque level of comic snark drizzled throughout the dialogue. The emotionally distant but information-overloaded personality she affects through Lemon is interesting in concept, but in execution invokes a terse, ADD-like quality that hampers the flow of the narrative. It could be argued that this is deliberate, that Strube is constructing the narrative in part through short, seemingly random interludes of useless and often disturbing information as a means of building a defensive shell around Lemon, who narrates the book from the first person, but in practice it made it difficult to want to invest myself in the main character’s emotional resolution—if any is to be had in the first place, based on the sense of hope-long-in-coming that reveals itself with only the very last sentence of the novel.

I’m torn. I want to love Lemon, but Lemon doesn’t want to give me the opportunity. For every quick spark of brilliance and lyrical trickery employed, Strube delights in pushing the reader out the door again just as we’re about to squeeze our foot through the crack.

Well written and exquisitely crafted, Lemon is as peculiar a read as the protagonist herself. Her defensive posture is based on the false sense of reason and maturity a teenager has—especially one who feels as if the world has wronged them in more ways than any one person can deal with. In that sense, Strube has succeeded on all fronts, imbuing Lemon with the cynicism and gravitas of someone three times her age and half her capacity for growth and understanding. At the end of the novel, she feels primed for change—for a new direction to ground her existence. The payoff brings the potential for light; the question is whether or not one can hold onto the sympathetic core of Lemon long enough to witness as hope replaces acquiescence.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! The character of Lemon is very well developed and so she became very real to me. She has lived a troubled life, and has become cynical and black, but at the same time is very endearing. She is the outsider in a world of the modern teenager and she describes her world in very blunt terms. It is a harsh place. She is an avid reader, and is a very clever observer of the world. I came to love her and couldn't put the book down until I knew she was safe.

[Tiff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lemon wins my unofficial award for Most Surprising Turnaround. At first I was outraged that I had bothered to pick it up, as I was greeted by yet another angsty and cynical adolescent voice that reminded me of that whiny asshole in Catcher in the Rye, which I thought was overrated and annoying. But after the first 75 pages I could see Lemon had distinct value, and that this whiny adolescent really did have something important to express. I warmed to her voice quickly after my initial judgment of it, and I was pleasantly surprised by what she had to say.

Lemon is one of the world's youngest misanthropes, and understandably so: her biological mother gave her up for adoption, after which she was taken in by a womanizing creep and a bipolar lunatic. Her adoptive parents get divorced, and she's then shuffled between her father's second wife's house and her mental case mother, who tries to convince Lemon to kill herself with her. Then her father's second wife is stabbed by one of her students, her father leaves said second wife for another woman, and her adoptive mother ends up in a mental institution for the third time. It all seems like a bit much at first, but then it's topped off even further by one of the most disturbing rape scenes I've ever read. Where's my cherry?

But we can forgive the melodrama because Lemon always seems to emerge as a heroine. She wears her anger as armor, and despite her age, I found her to be one of the strongest female main characters I've ever come across in literature. Strube has mastered the art of character arcing through first-person narrative, and it's obvious she's a playwright in addition to a novelist. The maturation of Lemon's voice is beautifully subtle, and the vulnerability that emerges in the climax of the book is completely satisfying. Strube made it easy to cheer for Lemon.

Definitely read this if you're a feminist, or just a fan of really strong first-person voice. Coach House Books did well in nabbing this one.

[Miz Moffatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lemon pits one girl against a world of unreliable parents, irreparable environmental damage, children suffering from cancer, and a collection of deadbeat, hopeless high school peers bent on making her life a spiraling vortex to hell. Our heroine, Lemon, is a rootless wonder -- her time is divided between her adopted father's suicidal ex, brief glimpses of the biological mother who Lemon has never met, and Drew, a school principal afraid to leave her house after she was stabbed by a student. At school, Lemon distances herself from her over-sexed, drug-addled peers; however, the self-imposed exile tends to draw more attention than she desires. She splits her time between a thankless part-time job at a mall ice cream parlour and a volunteer job on a cancer ward for children where she acts as a full-time caregiver for a quick-witted protégé. To escape the increasing disappointments of life in general, Lemon turns to critiques of classic literary heroines (eg. Jane Eyre, Tess of the d'Urbervilles) and stories of great tragedy for comfort. But life cannot be ignored, and the going gets worse before it can ever get better.

Despite the bleak content, Cordelia Strube's prose proves addictive and dazzling. Lemon's perspective leans toward the dark, brooding side of adolescence with good cause, but Strube compels readers to hitch themselves to the young girl's happiness. We want the best for Lemon, and it is hard to ignore the internalized protective parent who wishes to pull Lemon out from the tragedies gathering around her. Strube's first person narrative lends great believability to the character, and the artful integration of classic literary heroines adds greater depth to the novel's themes overall.

Ideal for: Coming-of-age junkies who will not shy away from troubling, upsetting events; English majors looking for a thesis topic comparing modern literary heroines with the girls of Austen; Readers who root for the underdog.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lemon is the kind of book that punches you in the gut and rips your heart out simultaneously. In a good way. Yes, that is possible.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I started reading Lemon, my first foray into Cordelia Strube’s oeuvre, even though Lemon is her eighth novel. The plot seemed like one I’d read before, yet it intrigued me nonetheless: misfit teenage girl with the odds stacked against her attempts to get out of high school in one piece. But upon reading the first few chapters, I quickly realized that Lemon herself was a far more complex and interesting character than any plot summary could have explained to me. Lemon buries herself in classic literature while complaining about the weak women within these tales. Lemon spends her spare time volunteering at a local hospital and creating a strong sisterly relationship with a young girl with cancer. Lemon truly doesn’t want to fit into the oversexed, overviolenced world of adulthood and doesn’t understand why her peers are so desperate to age themselves. And when you see the world through Lemon’s eyes, you’ll wonder why you were once so anxious to grow up, too.

Strube does a fantastic job of writing in the voice of a teenage misfit as she deals with difficult issues ranging from gang violence, to rape, to cancer, to dysfunctional families. While a few scenes are undeniably disturbing and painful to witness, the opportunity Strube gives us to view our world through a fresh new lens makes this book an incredibly worthwhile read. Lemon will punch you in the gut and rip your heart out, and yet somehow, you’ll be a better person because of it.

[Kendra · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started to read Lemon and was about 80 pages into the text, I represented the protagonist as a female, twenty-first century Holden Caulfield. Lemon is stuck in teenage-land with a set of unruly and imbalanced parents and some very messed up peers and teachers. As she navigates life, from her home where her agoraphobic stepmother mopes around, to her shitty job at the mall, to hang out with her popularity-obsessed BFF, to the sick kids hospital where she volunteers, Lemon glides through life by separating herself from the chaos around her, reading and ridiculing classic literature and citing 'Sick Facts' about humanity. By the time I had completed Lemon, I was no longer sure that she was a Holden Caulfield figure. Rather, the novel has a strong feminist message (one that Stieg Larsson would approve of) that is not found in The Catcher in the Rye. Cordelia Strube takes her character beyond teenage angst; Lemon has true reason to be wary of growing up into the adults she sees trapped in lives of their own making. At times this is a difficult story to read. Don't let that dissuade you, though.

I was very impressed with Corelia Strube's writing, and her ability to create a convincing and consistent voice for Lemon, the narrator of the novel. I intend to check out more books by Strube.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lemon was a delightful surprise. I was so sorry to finish it. Cordelia Strube has created a heartbreakingly, achingly, charming story about the angst of adolescence, and beyond. For all of you who don't take life and the cultural norms at face value, especially for the many who had less than a stellar start in life, you will enjoy and appreciate Lemon. Of course, being a fellow Canadian and Torontonian only added to my enjoyment of this novel.

I only have one criticism for this novel, and that is that it would be easy to see Lemon as articulate and thoughtful well beyond her young years. Her teenage concern for the starving in Africa, her contempt for the obscene wealth and influence of the 1%, and her raging against habitat desecration and short-sighted cruelty to animals, etc., all seem much more like well-established adult points of view. However, Lemon is so charming in her own predilections (I loved her often secret observation of her world from up in the trees, which both underlines Lemon's outsider status as well as her own unusual take on the world around her, for example), that it was pretty easy to set my disbelief aside and just enjoy the ride, albeit a very rough ride. Lemon's world is not for the faint of heart.

[Andrea MacPherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cordelia Strube excels at writing quirky, relatable characters. A girl named Lemon with three mothers, who likes reading about tragedies throughout history? In a less accomplished author's hands, this would be melodramatic, a heavy-handed device. But somehow Strube makes it sing. Her characters are all fully realized, authentic. Her teen characters are especially well-drawn.

The novel explores Lemon's often sad, often strange life. Her adopted mother has had a breakdown, and Lemon now lives with her ex-stepmother, who has become agoraphobic after an attack, while her adopted father now lives with his "new tomato". Lemon navigates the teen world mostly alone, relying on a few close friends and her own intelligence.

The major plot point comes nearly half way through the novel, and could have happened earlier. While I enjoyed the first half, at times it felt a little aimless in terms of narrative arc. But I'd highly recommend this novel; it tackles serious subjects with grace and humour.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent coming of age story of a 16 year old girl with 3 mothers (birth, adoptive & the one who brought her up) and a fairly useless father. The author writes really well about the mindset of a 16 year old and her high school struggles to get a grip on who she is and what she wants. It is a very good read and I couldn't put it down.

[Phoebe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like I want to say something about Holden Caulfied but later on I realised that wasn't it. Yes there are similarities but only because they both play the same role--alienated, displaced, troubled, dissatisfied, and lost...Lemon typifies the modern woman in the twenty-first century just as Holden became the embodiment of the modern zeitgeist. We can never outgrow adolescence. The twenty-first century is civilisation in its adolescent stage with all of its unfulfilled longings and anxieties about everything. We worry too much because we see too much and we know too much. Yet, we also forget. Lemon remembers what makes all those women special while the people around her show zero appreciation and inclination to remember, to counter this cultural amnesia that plagues and permeates all levels of sociohistorical development...so, can we escape from reality? Is all of this a show? The ending didn't seem like a let-down, but somehow, I wished for something more...

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

If there were an option to hand out half-stars, I would have given this book 2+1/2 stars. I really liked the opening, and was intrigued by why the main character was so insular. But as the story progressed, with more and more outrageous things happening and then no real resolution at all for what I considered to be the main outrageous event, I got the impression that Strube didn't quite know how to finish the book.

[Carrie Marcotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disturbing at times & draining. But the author captures the emotional upheaval of being lost & being different in a time of life when conformity is a survival mechanism. I would file this novel as a YA novel, from what I read in the first half, but I'm not sure it would fit there after reading the last half of the novel. Maybe on the cusp. The last couple of chapters makes up for the YA feeling I got from the first half of the book, where the character Lemon is at her most unstable. If it was a consistent novel the whole way through, it would definitely be 4 stars.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sharp, clear-eyed view of the atrocities of adolescence (and the world itself) from one outsider by choice. Though the book is darker than I expected, and contained one of the more distressing scenes I've ever read, Lemon's dry humour and relentless intelligence make the content completely digestible. Strube is completely tuned in to the modern teen world, one dramatically different from the one I remember just a decade ago.

[Stark Daley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may arguably be Strube's best book yet. While she still has the dark humour and compelling angst of earlier books, at least this time, like Pandora's jar, she left us with hope -- unlike the bleak emotional nihilism of earlier works, like The Barking Dog.

The title character is unforgettable, and takes you on a poignant, moving journey of self-discovery that typifies the struggles of today's teens. A brilliant work and a fabulous read.

[Jennifer Whiteford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this, read it in one sitting. Lemon, the narrator, is so compelling. Smart and interesting and flawed. The tragedies she experiences are horrifying but believable. It ends hopefully but not unrealistically. Broken people are still broken. Great writing. I'd like to read more of Strube's books.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

A searing YA novel centering less on the hope of survival than on the pure, cold fact of it. Strube includes grisly but necessary discussions of rape and sexual assault as well as frank portrayals of terminal illness and death. Lemon leaves a tiny weight on the chest, left me pawing through the last few pages long after my lunch break ended.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved this book. really gets into the mind of a teen age girl. such a horrid world view & then it comes true. i felt so badly for Limone. her voice is so strong that even after i finished the book, i can still hear her.