- - - - Copyright weepmag.com
- - - - By Matt Herlihy
Lawrence Krauser's new novel Lemon moves through you like a dream. Its voice is a whisper one moment and a roar the next, its rhythms soothe you with an odd familiarity. And while you're in it, it makes perfect sense. It's a love story like none before. Wendell is an unassuming but frantic-minded office drone who's just been left by his girlfriend. His life continues to swirl about him, and Marge's departure doesn't hit him as hard as it should. Enduring the consolation of well-meaning friends and hopeless parents, Wendell stumbles upon a discarded lemon in his apartment hallway. And there he finds love. The attraction begins as a low thrum, and even amidst absurdity Wendell finds the familiar in unfamiliar form. It's love, "an elusive jungle bird that because it is so durable has thousands of mimics and camouflaged neighbors." And when everything else begins to fall apart around him, from his roach-laden apartment to his health, only the lemon remains faithfully by his side. The courtship begins as a tactile curiosity, as Wendell develops a slow fascination for the lemon's feel, its comforting consistency. Placed upon his desk, the fruit begins to get his attention as a welcome distraction from his mundane job, but it quickly becomes a singular source of solace. He protects it, admires it, and shortly sees in it what his life cannot provide: purity, light, simple beauty. Krauser's dancing prose draws us in to Wendell's enchantment. As the man's fascination for the fruit grows to obsession, he finds its allure everywhere, from the colors of the city to the curves of architecture and the perfection of art. We're tempted at first to equate the scenario's absurdity to insanity, but Krauser weaves the narrative so closely with Wendell's perceptions that we actually feel him become saner as the relationship deepens. His hyperstructured observations of the world transform into poetic sweeps of epic scope. The music in his head seems to take shape as his object of desire becomes clearer, and his affection towards it becomes more fully expressed. As Wendell's passions escalate, so do his troubles. His fixation becomes harder to hide, and he's reluctantly forced to admit to the world that he has found in a fruit what no human could provide. His nurtured upbringing rejects everything about his new source of vitality, but his nature wins out. As the trappings of his existence drop away, life's pleasures take over. His days become playful and lyrical. Even his health improves. Despite the rising arc of clarity, however, Wendell remains trapped in a world that can never appreciiate his new intimacy. Those closest to him try to rationalize his behavior, but Wendell knows his situation is beyond the realm of reason. It's only a matter of time before the forces of nurture take over again in a Kafkaesque attempt to reclaim their turf. Krauser's gift for language is exquisite. He's a playwright and a musician, and it shows in both the craft of the book's episodic plot and the rhythms of his prose. He does wonders here with the boy-meets-girl routine; in turning half the question upside down, he's left with an ever-familiar structure, but without the baggage of every love story inevitable when humans are involved. It's less a high-concept stunt than the embrace of a challenge, and he pulls it off with gusto. - - - -
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