Feverland

Starred review from September 18, 2017
In this fractured, luminous memoir, poet Lemon (The Wish Book) describes how he has coped with traumas—including serial sexual violation as a child, and major brain surgery—that distort every moment of his life, waking or sleeping. When Lemon was about four, a teenage cousin repeatedly abused him, permanently scarring his psyche. Years later, as a reckless, self-destructive college undergrad, Lemon had a series of brain bleeds that required major surgery. In the aftermath of these injuries, Lemon found himself a stranger in his body and mind, feeling remote from life, even as he became a father and educator. Lemon’s bold decision to eschew narrative allows him to portray a sense of life as he lived it, with the blending of memory, sensory immediacy, and hopes and fears in a waking nightmare. In taut, vibrant prose, he pieces together the fragments of his life, including brutal images of violence and atrocity, a smattering of quotes from the likes of Aristotle and Samuel Beckett, and recollections of a drawn-out war with the rats in his garage. While the lack of a story arc can create inertia, his sparkling language and repeated motifs provide unity, and there is profound insight—even humor—in this tale from the dark side. Lemon’s suffering and survival deserve readers’ sympathy and respect, and his talent as a writer makes this memoir remarkable.