In this honest memoir, Lemon, the author of two collections of poetry (Mosquito
; Hallelujah Blackout
), was a carefree, hard partying, baseball-playing college student at Macalester College in Minnesota in 1997 when he suffered a stroke and later two brain bleeds. Readers are swept along on his rough ride during the next two years, through his nasty travails of frenetic drug and alcohol use, terribly misguided attempts to cope with his deteriorating and frightening condition. Often he is mean and uncaring to those around him; at other times he is confused and scared. He drops into a dark depression, a cruel fate for a young man, who was known on campus by the nickname of Happy. Ultimately, he undergoes brain surgery. Lemon offers a raw and honest narration of his college life, his relationships with girlfriends and family members, especially his loving and quirky mother. He dissects his repressed inner demons and recounts his continual struggle to regain his emotional and physical health following his operation. The result is a voltaic narrative that is alternately horrifying and touching. (Jan.)
