Last Night

Publishers Weekly

Out magazine editor-in-chief Lemon makes his fiction debut with a poignant love story set in mid-1980s Cuba. The novel takes the form of a long letter to a young Cuban man from an American on death row in a Cuban prison, written on the eve of his execution. In his sprawling, evocative missive, John Webster relives much of his relationship with boxer Eduardo Garcia, which begins when he catches Eduardo's eye on the streets of Manhattan. Three days of hot and heavy romance ensue (including a steamy night at the Metropolitan Opera) and end with Eduardo's return to Cuba and a promise from John to visit. He does, accompanying a left-wing political group whose members volunteer in the Cuban sugarcane fields. But John soon abandons his comrades to reunite with Eduardo in Havana. An afternoon of frolicking in Coppelia Park ends abruptly when Eduardo confronts a young Cuban thief and ends up beating him to death. In shock, John and Eduardo both flee, but the police quickly apprehend them. A court case rife with homophobia and betrayal determines their separate fates. The book's conceit of a protracted confessional love letter interspersed with atmospheric prison scenes grows wearisome and often feels forced. Yet the lovers' relationship is moving without being saccharine, and Lemon's graceful prose and taut pacing compensate somewhat for the story's creaky foundation. (Apr.) Forecast: Readers of the New Yorker may recognize Lemon as the magazine's former cultural editor, and a national advertising campaign in alternative publications as well as enthusiastic blurbs from Michael Cunningham and Edmund White should boost this title's sales. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The frame for Out magazine editor Lemon's debut novel is this: To while away his last hours on Earth in 1987, gay American John Webster, supposedly awaiting execution in his cell in a Havana prison, writes an endless farewell letter to his teenage Cuban lover, Eduardo, a boxer who killed a thief wanting John's sneakers, but whose murder charge was mysteriously shifted to John. His memory bottomless, John recalls their first meeting in New York, when both attended an embassy party, and their passionate involvement before Eduardo had to return to Cuba with his mother, a member of Castro's government. John also remembers their next meeting, after he came to Cuba as part of a labor brigade to cut sugar cane, and left the brigade to seek out his lover in Havana—a joyous reunion overshadowed by the assault on a Havana street and subsequent flight to a family friend's house in rural Cuba. John then recounts in mind-numbing detail his incarceration and interrogation and Eduardo's trial and what followed, with the acrid scent of homophobia always in the air. Occasional high-carat insights here into the tricky nexus of passion and power, surrounded by massive quantities of a highly toxic sludge of rumination and detail.