Happy: A Memoir

December 30, 2009

finalcoverAn emotion-charged, wrenching — and unexpectedly humorous — self-portrait of  one young man’s survival in body and in spirit

HAPPY
A MEMOIR
Alex Lemon

Scribner / Simon & Schuster
$25.00 Hardcover
ISBN 978141655023523268-Happy_160x240

“ With the urgency and rhythm of a street poet, Alex “Happy” Lemon chronicles a life of illness, addiction, recovery and redemption in his memoir called, simply, HAPPY. I will gladly recommend this gripping and tragic book to any parent— especially mothers—of a child in peril AND to the children who take them down a road for which they are unprepared.  Yes, this is the story of an addict and his recovery. Yes, this is the story of triumphing over a rare and dangerous illness. Yes, this is the story of a difficult parent’s redemption. But in Alex Lemon’s hands, this seemingly familiar tale will yield a surprised and happy reader.”
—Sarah Bagby, Watermark Books & Café, Wichita, Kansas

“A page-turner on par with the best thrillers…Lemon’s exquisite prose blasts us out of our own time, heart, brain, and body into his, making an acute empathy possible. Read this and weep, laugh, weep.”
– Library Journal, Editors’ Pick

Watch the trailer….

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Buy this book from your favorite locally owned and operated Midwest independent bookseller!
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MBA BOOKSELLER INFORMATION

Booksellers — Earn up to $100 in rebates from MBA for promoting HAPPY!
Midwest Connections rebate form for HAPPY (PDF)

HAPPY (ISBN-13: 9781416550235, $25.00)  is available from Scribner/Simon & Schuster or from your preferred wholesaler.  Be sure to contact the publisher for more information about this title.

Alex Lemon, author of HAPPY,  was a featured guest speaker at the 2009 MBA Trade Show Book & Author Dinner.

Alex Lemon is available for interviews and appearances when feasible geographically and for his schedule. If you’re interested in scheduling a store, book club or community event with Alex Lemon, please contact Scribner Publicity Manager, Kate Bittman, kate.bittman@simonandschuster.com, 212-632-4951.

If you have marketing questions about HAPPY, please contact Wendy Sheanin, Director Marketing, Adult Publishing Group, at Simon & Schuster, wendy.sheanin@simonandschuster.com, 212-698-7359.

MBA and Scribner/Simon & Schuster would love to have your comments and reviews for this memoir. Please send them to us so we can share your endorsements with your fellow MBA booksellers and with your customers!

D23268-Happy_160x600OWNLOADS

ABOUT THE BOOK

“At the trade show, we receive a plethora of books. Alex’s HAPPY was the first one I read.  In fact, I had nearly finished it by the time I returned home at the end of the trade show weekend. Like Alex in person, HAPPY gives us all (or seemingly all) of Alex: the boisterous partying college student; the scared young man who fears he might not survive brain surgery; the not so honorable boyfriend; the son; and all other parts of him.  In the past, Alex Lemon has published prose poetry.  The voice in HAPPY is one that is so accessible and so succint. Not every poet is able to write a memoir, but Alex Lemon has done a terrific job.”
– Jennifer Geraedts, Beagle Books, Park Rapids, MN

“Alex Lemon takes his reader inside the terror and strangeness of illness — and gives us, along the way, a loving portrait of a devoted, wonderfully nutty mother. Lemon is a brave, headlong writer, and he captures the life of the body with vivid and memorable intensity.”
– Mark Doty, author of Dog Years and Fire to Fire

“The pyrotechnic prose of Alex Lemon’s memoir creates an electrifying portrait of a body in crisis, and the way the soul is inexorably, reluctantly, dragged along…. If ever a book was written in blood, it is this one.”
– Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

“Happy unfurls like gauze, revealing not a wound, but a series of intricate and beautiful scars. Alex reminds us that though we can’t make it through this life unscathed, we can make it through transformed.”
– Robin Romm, author of The Mercy Papers and The Mother Garden

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 alcohol and drug abuse. His charming and carefree exterior masked his self-destructive and sometimes cruel behavior as he endured two more brain bleeds and a crippling depression. After undergoing brain surgery, he is nursed back to health by his free-spirited artist mother, who once again teaches him to stand on his own.

Alive with unexpected humor and sensuality, HAPPY is a hypnotic self-portrait of a young man confronting the wreckage of his own body; it is also the deeply moving story of a mother’s redemptive and healing powers. Alex Lemon’s Technicolor sentences pop and sing as he writes about survival — of the body and of the human spirit.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR alexlemon

“This past fall, my mother and I attended the Midwest Booksellers Association trade show, and we were fortunate enough to be able to share a table with author Alex Lemon during the Book & Author Dinner. The others seated at the table with us were a variety of personalities. I was struck by Alex’s ability to present all (or seemingly all) of the facets of his personality in front of a diverse group. Often, we present different versions of ourselves to different people. In the case of being in mixed company, people tend to pick the version that appeals to the majority. At dinner, Alex would let loose a bark of laughter and engage in banter with the more rowdy folks at the table, then turn, and with complete sincerity, talk to my mom and me about how interested he is in his wife’s academic scholarship. He never tried to hide his boisterous side from those less boisterous and never hid his sensitivities from those less sensitive. When Alex rose to read from his memoir HAPPY, I was so struck by his reading about undergoing brain surgery as a partying college student and his mother’s support of him.”
– Jennifer Geraedts, Beagle Books, Park Rapids, MN

Alex Lemon was born in Iowa, attended Macalester College, and lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Mosquito (Tin House Books) and Halleluja Blackout (Milkweed Editions).  He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Visit his website at www.alexlemon.com.

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