The Lemon Grove

May 19, 2014
From the start, English married couple Jenn and Greg expect their annual summer holiday to Majorca to be different this year, with their 15-year-old daughter, Emma, joining them along with her new boyfriend, 17-year-old Nathan. They don’t yet know, though, just how different things will be. Jenn, as the reader soon learns, is actually Emma’s stepmother, but she is also the only mother Emma has ever known. The close relationship between the two, however, is not enough to prevent the unexpected attraction Jenn feels for Nathan, which, apparently, is mutual. This novel from Walsh (Once Upon a Time in England) is driven by her awareness of the connection between lust and romantic love, natural beauty and artifice, and passion and regret. Equally compelling is the honesty with which Jenn confronts her own aging and the knotty emotions that this awareness triggers. Though Jenn’s preoccupation with Nathan is necessarily myopic, it’s unfortunate that the book doesn’t provide much sense of her before this reckless May-December romance. While some brief sketches of the family’s history are provided, the picture never becomes clear enough to fully illuminate Jenn’s compulsions. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider.

June 15, 2014
Walsh, winner of the Somerset Maugham Prize for her second novel, Once Upon a Time in England (2008), sets her new one in Majorca during the last week of a married couple's annual summer vacation.Jenn and Greg are in heaven, lazing about in their familiar house, a rental they just manage to afford on a professor's salary, enjoying the quiet comfort their long-term marriage provides, when their teenage daughter, Emma, stirs up their last lazy days by bringing her new, inappropriately older boyfriend, Nathan, into their lives. Before long there are hints that Jenn's close inspection of Nathan may be more attraction than careful observation. Soon, she's betraying everyone around her to fulfill her own desires. Walsh is attempting something difficult here, creating a high-minded literary look at adulterous entanglement while also providing a quintessential steamy beach read, with scene after scene of flirtatious signals where spoken words aren't needed. Instead we get this: "He moves his fingers down over her palm and slots them through hers. She can't look at him. She stands there, letting him stroke her hand, staring out to sea; he is looking back into the cave. His touch feels like hot, wet earth. Her breathing is staccato, too loud." The problem is that there's little reason for any of it to happen; we don't learn enough about Jenn to be invested in her betrayal of both her husband, who's absent for most of the narrative, and her daughter, who we eventually learn is actually Greg's offspring and her stepdaughter. It isn't just that Jenn is stereotypically self-absorbed and unlikable; it's that every character is flat.The seductive and enticing drama Walsh tries to lay out can be seen coming a mile away across the stunning landscape. The ending is meant to be a cliffhanger, but there's nothing much to imagine happening next.

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February 15, 2014

Winner of the Betty Trask and Somerset Maugham awards, Walsh is known for edgy, in-your-face novels; this one is billed as hot but not quite as hot as Fifty Shades of Grey, and the writing should be more upscale. Jenn and Greg, married for 14 years, are lazing about in Majorca when Greg's daughter from his first marriage arrives with boyfriend Nathan. And guess who's attracted to Nathan? Fading youth, female desire, the pull of temptation, the craziness of marriage, and vivid sex--it's all here.

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