Longlisted for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize!
Shortlisted for the 2010 Trillium Book Award!
Lemon has three mothers: a biological one she's never met, her adopted
father's suicidal ex, and Drew, a school principal who hasn't left the
house since she was stabbed by a student. She has one deadbeat dad, one
young cancer-riddled protégé, and two friends, the school tramp and a
depressed poet.
Figuring the numbers are against her, Lemon just can't be bothered
trying to fit in. She spurns fashion, television, and even the mall. She
reads Mary Wollstonecraft and gets pissed off that Jane Eyre is such a
wimp. Meanwhile, the adults in her life are all mired in
self-centredness, and the other kids are getting high, beating each
other up in parks, and trying to outsex one another. High school is
misery, a trial run for an unhappy adulthood of bloated waistlines, bad
sex, contradictions, and inequities, and nothing guidance counsellor
Blecher can say will convince Lemon otherwise.
But making the choice to opt out of sex and violence and cancer and
disappointment doesn't mean that these things don't find you. It will be
up to Lemon if she can survive them with her usual cavalier aplomb.