Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
Happy
by
Alex Lemon (Goodreads Author)
His freshman year of college, Alex Lemon was supposed to be the star catcher on the Macalester College baseball team. He was the boy getting every girl, the hard-partying kid who everyone called Happy, often without even knowing his real name. In the spring of 1997, he had his first stroke.
For two years Lemon coped with his deteriorating health by sinking deeper into alcoh...more
For two years Lemon coped with his deteriorating health by sinking deeper into alcoh...more
Hardcover, 304 pages
Published
December 29th 2009
by Scribner
(first published December 12th 2009)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
595)
This memoir mostly covers the authors’ 1996-2000 years as a Macalester College student. He was known as Happy, and he played on the baseball team. Interspersed are three story lines: 1. His stroke in 1997 followed by several brain bleeds; 2. A lot of screwing, drinking, dope doing, and swearing both before and after the stroke; and 3. The love for him by his dad, step mom, his mother’s boy friend, and especially his mom. I speculate his therapists encouraged him to write his story.
He had major b...more
He had major b...more
Feb 09, 2010
Maria
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Anyone who's ever had a life-changing illness or who needs inspiration.
This book was a quick read. I picked it up in the first place because I have had brain surgery too, as did my father and an ex-boyfriend. I can relate to the sensation of not knowing your own body anymore. Lemon describes this odd feeling with vibrant language and he captures it very well. Among the best descriptions: feeling yourself fall over to one side as if in slo-mo and not being able to do anything about it, the vertigo (which I still have 23 years after my operation), the double vision,...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Many of Happy's enthusiastic reviewers seemed to feel the need to begin with an apology. Sure, there are lots of books out there about young people confronting fatal diseases and just as many no-holds-barred chronicles of men leaving adolescence behind (though not without letting us in on the best parts first). But as Laura Miller of Salon.com observed, "this one is something special." Perhaps it's the fact that Lemon's later career would prove he had a poet inside him the whole time: some of th...more
I really couldn't get into this book.
First, the writing seemed overly poetic, to the point where I was just confused as to what was going on. I love some insightful, emotional poetic language but this seemed forced and overused.
Second, the narrator was just a typical macho college kid who used his disability to be a scumbag and feel sorry for himself. I understand, he was a twenty year old male, and that's how they are sometimes. I also understand that he was battling a severe injury, but I know...more
First, the writing seemed overly poetic, to the point where I was just confused as to what was going on. I love some insightful, emotional poetic language but this seemed forced and overused.
Second, the narrator was just a typical macho college kid who used his disability to be a scumbag and feel sorry for himself. I understand, he was a twenty year old male, and that's how they are sometimes. I also understand that he was battling a severe injury, but I know...more
"Happy" by Alex Lemon is a thoroughly deep and encouraging memoir. Lemon allows the reader to explore and experience the confusion and blurriness of his life after he discovers about his brain malformation. Lemon writes in such a way that makes the reader feel as if they are experiencing the blurred vision and black outs of life while trying to continue living as if nothing has changed. The depression and substance abuse that ensues as his escape from the reality of his condition reveals the fea...more
"My new body. My girlfriend. My friends. My life. And I'm too afraid to let anyone see me. I've always been afraid people would think I was a pussy, and now, that's exactly what I am."
"Happy" is the story of the young American male. Probably it would be of great interest to anyone curious about what a wide range of ways to be angry really exist in this world. He loves his mother, but hates that love. His attachments to his friends are always ambiguous, and sealed only with sentences that contain...more
"Happy" is the story of the young American male. Probably it would be of great interest to anyone curious about what a wide range of ways to be angry really exist in this world. He loves his mother, but hates that love. His attachments to his friends are always ambiguous, and sealed only with sentences that contain...more
This book really intrigued me, but the writing style drove me bananas. It's really just a series of recreated conversations, and college-age boys are just not that articulate, so there are a lot of passages that start with "dude" and are followed by a string of profanity. I mean, okay, but that doesn't really add to my experience as a reader. I just... I just didn't like the structure. It's imagistic, in that, as I said, it's really just a collection of conversations and very brief details of sp...more
This is a book I think Oprah's book club would love in terms of the subject matter. Alex Lemon is a student at Macalester College, playing baseball and getting drunk with his friends when he begins to suffer from seizures that require brain surgery. If this trauma weren't enough, it becomes evident that the author is also a sexual abuse survivor and has a somewhat unique relationship with his mother. In terms of writing-style, however, I'm not sure Oprah and her club would approve. Lemon is vulg...more
What rings truest in this memoir is Lemon's inability at the age of nineteen to imagine that he has a serious medical problem, and the fact that the profane, stoned dorm mates notice only that his baseball game is slipping.
Lemon's portrait of his eccentric and supportive mother is affecting and moving, and the glimpses of just how unusual his upbringing must have been are tossed in almost as afterthoughts and never dwelt upon indulgently.
I am not an avid consumer of memoirs, and have avoided al...more
Lemon's portrait of his eccentric and supportive mother is affecting and moving, and the glimpses of just how unusual his upbringing must have been are tossed in almost as afterthoughts and never dwelt upon indulgently.
I am not an avid consumer of memoirs, and have avoided al...more
During his college freshman year Alex Lemon suffered his first stroke. An unexpected event in one so young, who was hugely popular, athletic, doing well in his classes. It's not often that the experience of a stroke has been shared with so much eloquence. But the fact was that Alex Lemon's disability is lodged in what one doctor describes as "an eloquent part of the brain." Lemon is a talented published poet, his third collection is coming out next month. But the irony of his nickname "Happy" is...more
view 1 comment
I set out to read this all in one gulp, but I realized a little ways in that I was going to have to switch gears and move to smaller doses. Especially when the book moved into material about the brain surgery, the combination of the vividly-rendered scenes with rich language made it better to experience it in smaller intense bursts. The (often) short chapters really packed an emotional wallop, and I needed time to allow each one to land.
On the whole, this was a memoir bursting with life. Humor....more
On the whole, this was a memoir bursting with life. Humor....more
Happy is a real life honest memoir about a hard partying college kid. It could almost be comparable to A Million Little Pieces, except it is real. And not quite so graphic. Alex Lemon is just a kid who comes face to face with his own mortality at the tender age of nineteen.
The book is well written and fluid. This memoir almost reads like a novel. Full of coming of age angst and even a little bit of fear. Given the fact that the author is telling his story, you know there is a happy ending, but a...more
The book is well written and fluid. This memoir almost reads like a novel. Full of coming of age angst and even a little bit of fear. Given the fact that the author is telling his story, you know there is a happy ending, but a...more
A fresh, unadulterated voice and a lucid, honest perspective make this memoir a quintessential statement on the damaged childhood that was too frequently a common experience of the late twentieth century, here writ large due to extreme circumstances. Shot with humor, bravado, and forgiveness, HAPPY demonstrates an entirely new attitude of mature experience combined with unblinking vision, topped off with a dash of childlike hope. Shake something hard enough, and all attitudes and viewpoints come...more
This was not as good as I expected. I thought the premise was interesting. A boy around my age suffers from multiple strokes, and his struggle with the debilitating symptoms of brain hemorrhaging is chronicled. Because his life is drastically changed, he turns to drugs and alcohol to get through the ordeal. He also goes through a personality change, becoming aggressive toward his family and friends.
The premise is not what I had a problem with. It was the erratic writing. In some parts, he tries...more
The premise is not what I had a problem with. It was the erratic writing. In some parts, he tries...more
Alex Lemon has an undependable brain, it bleeds from time to time, causing vertigo, wobbly vision, and the loss of his college baseball career. On the other hand, the surgery could kill him.
A poet, Lemon describes his illness--and his life--as Kerouac might have, jazzy rhythm, made-up words, and luminous imagery. We don't always know where we are or what's going on, but when we catch up with him, it's a wild ride.
The book forms a tribute to his "Ma," who demands his return from darkness.
It's an...more
A poet, Lemon describes his illness--and his life--as Kerouac might have, jazzy rhythm, made-up words, and luminous imagery. We don't always know where we are or what's going on, but when we catch up with him, it's a wild ride.
The book forms a tribute to his "Ma," who demands his return from darkness.
It's an...more
I found the book to be an 'experiential' book with regards to the author (Lemon's) outstanding conveyance of the experience of the brain injury. He wrote in such a way that 'made vivid' his own experience. Especially vivid is the part where he first walked and ran (after his surgery). That was a joyful and moving part of the book.
Beyond that, I got frustrated in Lemon's approach to the story. He spent much time detailing his college debauchery. This would have worked for me, but the writing did...more
Beyond that, I got frustrated in Lemon's approach to the story. He spent much time detailing his college debauchery. This would have worked for me, but the writing did...more
Lemon’s memoir focuses on the diagnosis, treatment and recovery of a brain malformation which is discovered while the author is a young athlete at a tight-knit mid-Western liberal arts college. Lemon chronicles a hyper-masculine existence of drunken parties, substance abuse, male bonding, locker-room talk, and promiscuity and a substantial amount of the book’s dialogue is comprised of one expletive after another. The author indulges in a fair amount of physical abuse and self-mutilation of his o...more
Alex Lemon packs so much into this college-life/near death experience memoir. Clouds don't hang low, they crouch. Colors don't change, they splinter. Bad things happen over a life and we get drips and drizzles and then a thunderclap of clarity. The only thing that keeps me from giving this memory piece the five stars that it probably earns, is Lemon's repetitive party sequences. Maybe they cut to close to the bone in their foul-language-drug-abusing dorm stinking antics. I found the memory seque...more
An open memoir that highlights the dark passenger of someone who everyone assumes is so "happy". Lemon is a solid writer that isn't afraid to expose his greatest faults. Everyone assumes their life journey has been challenging and then you read about an accomplished author who can barely read post brain surgery.... suddenly our journey seems so basic and easy.
This book will make you "home sick" for your college days, challenge how you feel people perceive you and ultimately help you reflect on y...more
This book will make you "home sick" for your college days, challenge how you feel people perceive you and ultimately help you reflect on y...more
I really loved Alex Lemon's memoir. He goes from happy-go-lucky college jock dude to dizzy, confused college dude who finds out he's got a bleeding brain. There are two elements that I really dug in this book: Lemon's a poet so his language often turns super-visual and beautifully off-kilter, wonderfully illustrating his blurry state of mind, especially around the time of his brain surgery. The second thing I loved was Alex's mom. What a firecracker she is. I fell in love with her, maybe even mo...more
Alex Lemon is poetic in the prose of the ambient and outright ribald, totally colloquial (to the tune of faithfully represented teenage angst) about all interpersonal relationships, dialogue, etc. It makes for an interesting memoir, and given the subject matter (a life-threatening brain malformation) for a moving example of how the everyman's life is exquisite, precious, damaged, dazzling and unbearable, all at once.
I thought the book was disapointing. I couldn't stand the structure of how it was wrote.It was annoying and jumpy to me. It made it hard to truly understand what he was going through when you had to sift through all the vulgar talk intertwined with how he was truly feeling. I feel bad typing this since it is his memoir, but for how intense of an experience he went through I felt his focus was more on the girls he was with and the parties he went to.
LANGUAGE!!!!! I don't recommend!!! The story was covered in a thick layer of foul language. Too bad because the story could have been educational or at least interesting to see how someone coped with a major brain bleed. He has never totally recovered and is alive and is a poet. Wonder if his poetry is as profane as this memoir?
This book was very sad. I found the title and his nickname ironic. I felt badly for him and his mother. The language in the book is harsh but sitting I suppose for an 18-year-old boy--- appropriate. Don't read this book if you are looking for a feel-good ending.
Interesting memoir (I'm into memoirs!) of a 19 year old college student who suffers from a couple debilitating brain hemorrages followed by a surgery to correct it. I enjoyed how descriptive he was with his feelings, his depression surrounding all of those things.
If you read it once, that's cool. But if you wanna get sexy w/ the words, dream little dreams in A's meteoric-metaphoric-tyrannosauric language, I say give it a minimum of 4 reads. And read Mosquito and Hallelujah Blackout before, during, & after.
I read this because he is a Mac grad, but this book is a litany of foul-mouthed crap that apparently is what constitutes male relationships on college campuses these days. He's not likable and his story just didn't resonate with me.
at some points I really liked how the author flirted raucously with language, turning nouns into verbs and vice versa. for me, after a while his whimsy got tedious. I wanted less braindamaged rambling and more solid meat of story.
Disappointingly shallow in scope, he glosses over the rampant substance abuse that would have also caused him issues during his college career. The story is deeper than he allows the narrative to take the reader.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Alex Lemon's poetry collections include Hallelujah Blackout (2008 Milkweed Editions) and Mosquito (Tin House Books 2006). A memoir is also forthcoming from Scribner. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous magazines including AGNI, BOMB, Denver Quarterly Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Pleiades and Tin House. Among his awards are a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry...more
More about Alex Lemon...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
