Goodbye Lemon
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Finally, after fifteen years, Jack Tennant is going home. Against his better judgment, he has succumbed to his mother’s guilt-laden pleas that he see his estranged father, who suffers from “locked-in syndrome,” a condition that leaves him fully intact mentally but unable to speak or move, save for blinking his eye. Jack’s do-gooder girlfriend believes that this trip is a chance for Jack to achieve peace with his family. But Jack’s no fool: He knows better—and he knows there’s a lot his girlfriend doesn’t realize about the Tennant family. She doesn’t know about Jack’s alcoholic brother, Pressman. And she doesn’t know the truth about his brother Dex, who drowned when Jack was very young—and about whom his parents have never said a word.
With his family teetering on the brink, Jack finds himself in the uncomfortable position of having to make a decision he’s avoided for years. Should he walk away from his past and leave his crazy family to solve their problems without him? Or should he try to mend fences that have been broken for as long as he can remember?
Jack has a lot of choices to make—and fast. If he doesn’t, he runs the risk of losing everything, including the woman he loves.
“Adam Davies has a delicious command of the English language.”—St. Petersburg Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When Jack Tennant, a frustrated 32-year-old adjunct lecturer and part-time women's shelter night supervisor, returns to a Baltimore suburb to confront the wealthy WASP clan he cut off contact with 15 years before, we know what to expect: emotions will erupt, secrets will be revealed and some resolution will be found. Yet Davies (The Frog King) makes it all happen in such a fresh, smart way the conventions of this conceit are almost forgotten. Ostensibly visiting to help care for his father following a debilitating stroke (and to satisfy his girlfriend, Hahva, who thinks he needs closure), Jack sees his return as his last chance to confront the old man who is fully conscious but entirely paralyzed. Jack blames his father, Guilford Tennant, a stern ex-marine and alcoholic industry executive, for Jack's brother Dexter's death at six (Jack was five; Dexter was known as Lemon) and for ending Jack's chance to study piano at Juilliard. Of course, things don't develop as Jack expects, and how Jack gets to the point of wanting to love his father "exactly the way he deserves" is a story that soars on the same jet stream of inspired wordplay and literary tics that made The Frog King a dazzling read. Bitter, smart and soaked in dark humor, Jack and his narrative harbor enormous heart.
