The Regal Lemon Tree

December 14, 2020
Saer’s intricate, Joycean work (after The Clouds) chronicles the New Year’s Eve celebrations of a fisherman’s family in an Argentinian coastal community. Joining Wenceslao are his sisters-in-law, their husbands, and their respective children, while Wenceslao’s wife stays behind to mourn the couple’s only son, who died six years earlier. As the festivities commence, Wenceslao reflects on memories of his son, his own father, and the lemon tree that grows in his patio. The tree’s unusual year-round blossoming stirs up rumors amongst the townspeople, who all wonder about the tree’s almost magical qualities. In this piercing and surreal narrative, light on plot but rich with imagery, Saer constantly plays with the concept of time, drifting in and out of Wenceslao’s recollections, such as the time when Wenceslao and his father went to hunt otters and momentarily lost each other in a sea of fog. While the shifts can be difficult to follow, they illuminate the ways in which loss and grief have shaped Wenceslao’s interior life, and his persistent embrace of life in contrast to his wife’s moroseness. This mesmerizing novel will delight readers of recursive, deeply immersive fiction.