Longlisted for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize! Shortlisted for the 2010 Trillium Book Award! Lemon has three mothers: a biological one she's never met, her adopted father's suicidal ex, and Drew, a school principal who hasn't left the house since she was stabbed by a student. She has one deadbeat dad, one young cancer–riddled protege, and two friends, the school tramp and a depressed poet. Figuring the numbers are against her, Lemon just can't be bothered trying to fit in. She spurns fashion, television, and even the mall. She reads Mary Wollstonecraft and gets pissed off that Jane Eyre is such a wimp. Meanwhile, the adults in her life are all mired in self�ntredness, and the other kids are getting high, beating each other up in parks, and trying to outsex one another. High school is misery, a trial run for an unhappy adulthood of bloated waistlines, bad sex, contradictions, and inequities, and nothing guidance counsellor Blecher can say will convince Lemon otherwise. But making the choice to opt out of sex and violence and cancer and disappointment doesn't mean that these things don't find you.

It will be up to Lemon if she can survive them with her usual cavalier aplomb. 'You won't find Toronto novelist Cordelia Strube's latest fiction listed in the glossy big–publisher catalogues or ascending the bestseller lists. Yet she's Canada's best bet to succeed Alice Munro . Read Lemon. Then leave it lying about for your sullen teen to "discover."' – Toronto Star 'With Lemon, Strube proves that striking intelligence comes from the mouths of babes; gems of wisdom litter each page.' – The Walrus 'Strube has taken us on a remarkable trip – part literary kaleidoscope, part emotional roller coaster.' – National Post.