The Lemon Grove

A highly charged,sultry, beautifully written and compulsive one-sit read, The Lemon Groveis an intense novel about obsession and sex—the perfect summer book.

Jenn and Greg have been married for fourteen years, and, asthe book opens, they are enjoying the last week of their annual summer holidayin Deià, a village in Majorca off the coast of southern Spain. Their days arelanguorous, time passing by in a haze of rioja-soaked lunches, hours at thebeach, and lazy afternoon sex in their beautiful villa. It is the perfectsummer idyll—until Greg’s teenage daughter, Emma, arriveswith her new boyfriend, Nathan, in tow.

What follows, over the course of seven days, is abrilliantly paced fever dream of attraction between Jenn and the reckless yetmesmerizing Nathan. It is an intense pas de deux of push and pull, risk andconsequence, and moral rectitude, as it gets harder and harder for Jenn tostifle her compulsion.

This is a very smart novel about many things: the loss ofyouth, female sexuality, the lure of May-December temptation, the vicissitudesof marriage and the politics of other people’s children. It is simultaneouslysexy and substantive, and Helen Walsh’s masterful, evenhanded tone can’t helpbut force the reader to wonder, whatwould I have done?

Beautifully written with the tension of a rubber bandjust about to snap, The Lemon Grove is a book that will have peopletalking all summer long.