Lemon Gulch

Rating:
Summary: Destined to be a cult-classic
Review: It's hard to imagine that a young American boy who describes himself as "6 feet tall although only 12 years of age...red greasy hair and pimples...and stutter horrid while conversing...fat as a hog plus additionally purported to wet bed sporadically" can be the sympathetic protagonist of Donovan O'Malley's first novel - Lemon Gulch. Whether sympathy is the right emotion the reader is certainly drawn into this young man's (Danny) saga of woe and bizarre experiences all happening in six weeks of his life. The exotic 'white trash' American language peppered as it is with Danny's upward mobile vocabulary, two or three adjectives instead of one, redundant adverbs and many superfluous prepositions takes a little getting used to but soon one finds that Danny starts creeping in to your thoughts and reveries. He is certainly no hero, with all his faults, his often unpleasant behaviour and his grossness of body and manner, but he works his way into your concern and compassion for his many predicaments. Deep down Lemon Gulch is a story of a very warm and caring person who is battling against insurmountable odds in "A Often Uncaring World."

Rating:
Summary: Curlique Style Conveys Credible Substance
Review: My first reaction: dismay. The author set himself up for failure? Why did he erect barriers to wrap his point away from sight? First, the convoluted dialect of Danny his hero. Plus the hero himself: who can relate to a 12-year-old grossly overweight due to hormone imbalance? Let alone to the setting of white-trash California in 1947?

But then a minor magic happened. I saw real literature emerge, in Danny's first-person account of his trials and tribulations in his emerging life. Behind the barriers noted, real life and truths and a genuine valid response to them. Neither oversolemn preaching, not too-flamboyant flaring, either.

Is the book a "cult classic" as earlier reviews here suggested? Well, maybe/maybe not... But the book solidly echoes some traditions in literature. (1) Main Character: an overweight satirist? Well, think John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces-shrill in parts compared to this book. (2) Setting? The curlique-tattered environment of languor. Think early Truman Capote stories in the south. (3) Language-style? The diction-Danny speaks in his own "idiolect" (personal language) comprised of erudite diction charmingly misallopropped at times, and lavish punctuation-capitals, parentheses-and free-range syntax unabashed by grammar fences. For this, think William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, with its combo amalgam of babytalk, pre-Spanglish, drug diction, so-gai camp, and what else...

Of course I'm biassed there. I speak/write in my own amalgamated idiolect of polyvalent dictations myself, so I especially enjoy Donny's verbalacities such as the following typical enough:

"Why do explicit persons talk so mean to We Children?! Even although I am almost 6 feet of height plus look a whole alots older due to Department and Premature Pubescence then 12. I am only 1 humane boy!"

Danny trials, he tribulates, he triumphs. A lively plot whereby the radio heroine is unmasked, Danny finally beats up the bully, and awakens transformed in the hospital, and as for his "unattainable" heartthrob Fred?!... General human issues somehow validated amid the specifics of grotesque, frank burlesque, and Local Color. Or, wait-perhaps not in spite of, but by means of?! Amazingly, the book ended up on my All-Favorites shelf (secondary position, admittedly). Author O'Malley has, if not genius, at least the talent of an individual artistic vision which shapes mundane subjects. Last I heard, that was, like, "literature."

Rating:
Summary: An Important Book that Stays With You
Review: The title of the book might sound to some like one of those period-western novels. It is not!

You may feel resistant as you begin the book, because the protagonist speaks in an odd, uneducated way and seems unlikable. You will be richly rewarded for hanging in, however.

Has a sweet, lasting quality, this book. The voice of the protagonist remains inside of your head like a dear friend, even months after finishing.

Lemon Gulch not only has an authentic voice, not only is entertaining and endearing, but it also has the ability to teach even a bigoted person about compassion, diversity, and empathy -- by putting him inside the shoes of someone he thinks he dislikes. Which is really pretty amazing when you think about it.

As if that weren't praise enough, hang on to your hat: I believe this book is in the league of Catcher In The Rye.