Spanning many years, the foundational narrative of innocent love and unspoken affections in Lemongrass in Summer is fleshed out with convincing characters. Each stands apart as a complete existence. Even as they progress through various stages of life, their unique characters remain distinct.
The stage is constructed from elements of secondary school life in Taiwan: daily squabbles, student clubs, advancement exams, and anxieties over the future. The authenticity of the rhythms of student life – the ups and downs, the tightly wound bonds of friendship – all draw the reader’s admiring attention. The depictions of those beautiful moments of youth, so highly anticipated even if we believed they’d never come, capture an exquisite abandon that most adults no longer possess.
The author has inlaid this shimmering portrait of adolescence with the dilemmas of real life, setting up the misunderstandings, deceptions, and wasted words that always mar human relations, and bringing the story back down to earth, eliciting a call and response between youthful dreams and the possibilities afforded by reality.