Lemon, Brendan

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Alyson Publications, P.O. Box 4371, Los Angeles, CA 90028.

CAREER: New Yorker (magazine), New York, NY, former cultural editor; Out (magazine), New York, NY, editor-in-chief, 2000–05.

WRITINGS:

Last Night (novel), Alyson Books (Los Angeles, CA), 2002.

Contributor of cultural writing to Financial Times.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A nonfiction book.

SIDELIGHTS: Brendan Lemon's debut novel, Last Night, concerns the intense romance between American Jack Webster and his young Cuban lover, Eduardo García. The complex plot is presented as a letter Jack writes while awaiting execution in a Cuban prison. As he bids farewell to Eduardo, he looks back over the short, tempestuous time they had together. Not long before meeting Eduardo, Jack's longtime partner Josh had died of leukemia. Taken to a diplomatic function at the Cuban embassy by a friend, Jack meets Eduardo, the eighteen-year-old son of a high-ranking Cuban-government official. There is mutual attraction between the two, and after their initial encounter they meet again, this time in Cuba. When Eduardo defends them both against a mugger and accidentally kills his assailant, Jack takes responsibility for the killing and is sent to prison.

Reviewing Last Night for Gay & Lesbian Review World-wide, Marshall Moore found some problems with the epistolary premise of the book, but added that "Last Night is a moving story, even in the wrong container. Lemon's prose, while wordy at times, is smart and elegant with brilliant flashes of insight and turns of phrase. The whirlwind nature of the romance lends the book a breathless and slightly tragic aura: we know very well it can't last." The story is built on a "creaky foundation," stated a Publishers Weekly writer, but nevertheless, the author tells the story with "graceful prose and taut pacing." According to a Kirkus Reviews writer, Lemon provides some "high-carat insights here into the tricky nexus of passion and power"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, September-October, 2002, Marshall Moore, review of Last Night, p. 47.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2002, review of Last Night, p. 289.

Lambda Book Report, August, 2002, Jim Gladstone, review of Last Night, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, March 25, 2002, review of Last Night, p. 41.