Goodbye Lemon is one of those edgy, contemporary novels. Think of it like a really depressed American Nick Hornsby novel (About A Boy). The main character, Jack Tennant, is called home when his father suffers a drinking related stroke. After the death of his brother when Jack was five his family fell apart, he and his brother blame his father for being drunk and not watching him, his mother has become a control freak and his father, has managed to stay perpetually drunk. Now the brother has descended into the same kind of drunkenness and has decided that the answer to their problems is for the two of them to kill their father.
Not surprisingly, Jack is affected by the craziness, starts drinking, drives his girlfriend away, loses the (not-so-great) job he has and in general falls apart. Don't worry, the end of the novel, is redemptive and he rebuilds his life in new and surprising ways.
I actually really liked this novel. If he would have ended up a drunk in the gutter it actually would have been a more interesting novel but I do like a bit of hope at the end of my literature.
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