In the first chapter of “Take a Lemon”, Marshall Steen, a college student home on break, dreams that he has wakened in a woman’s body.  No one else seems to notice so he just rolls with things for awhile, until he realizes that he’s actually awake.  He soon discovers that everyone remembers him as a girl, not a boy.  As he struggles with this new reality, he tries to figure out what happened to him, and how he can get back to his old life.

The pace is fairly slow as the story is told by Marshall in first person and so focuses on his emotional reactions to being female.  There’s a lot of internal monologue and character-driven analysis.  For the first few chapters, Marsh finds the situation interesting and kind of funny.  He tries to figure out how to put on women’s clothing and walk in high heels.  It isn’t until the third chapter that he seems to realize that this isn’t a dream.  The reality is that everyone remembers him always being a girl, so they expect “him” to behave as “she” has in the past that they remember.  Unfortunately, he has no memory of this past.  When he tries to convince a few people that he used to be a boy, no one believes him.

Most of the dialogue in the first 10 chapters is with “his” younger sister Tina and “his” best friend Chad.  Neither of them believes that he has really changed sexes but they both humour him and tell him about his female self’s life.  The subtle, and not-subtle, differences between Marshall and Marsha’s life are kind of interesting.  In both realities Marsh and Tina have lived for years with their mother, becoming very close.

If you enjoy character-driven stories with more internal monologues than action, you may enjoy “Take a Lemon”.  I don’t know where the author is going with it, but the narrator is a nice guy in a very weird situation, trying to figure things out and cope with a little help from from his favourite people.

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(!!Warning, this review includes spoilers!!)

The title of this book is almost prescient of my experience with the book. It is classic (if unintended) bait and switch. Reading the synopsis one pictures a standard science fiction book: a science experiment goes wrong and puts our hero in an unfortunate situation. [more . . .]

Not bad beginning – have to see where it goes from here.  I think a ‘rambling’ start is appropriate for the subject.  I am looking forward to seeing where the author takes this one – so many possibilities, so little time.

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