Happy: Halfway

I’m about half-way through Happy by Alex Lemon and I have loved it so far. It was difficult for me to put it down long enough to write this. First, let me say, if you are offended by strong language, this might not be the book for you. Also if you have a weak stomach when it comes to a lot of blood and other graphic images, you may not want to read this. If things like that don’t bother you, then I’d definitely recommend this one.

Lemon’s imagery and descriptions throughout the book are great. Even just in the first few lines of the book, you can see and feel what he’s going through:

“The world whirls when I crack open. Bookshelf, poster board, the windows wink their eyes. The digital clock is a red blur. Every light pulses yelloworange and brilliant, and the TV is a blue splash. When I stand, the dorm room spins and I tip, slamming my chin into the bed frame. My temple rocks off of the cinder-block wall and I crash back to the mattress. The first pounding breath is Good morning you asshole and my insides rubberband,” (13).

The first and last lines are my favorite. He cracks open rather than wakes up and his insides rubberband and you just know exactly the way those things feel. Even if you’ve never experienced those feelings, you can imagine them, and they give you a wonderful image. And he never neglects the colors in the world around him. His descriptions of the colors and how they blur together really emphasizes how physically sick he is. He can’t see properly, he’s constantly dizzy.

For most of the first half of the book, he brushes off these symptoms, telling people he just has a cold or the flu. He’s unable to field any balls as catcher for his baseball team which makes his coach and teammates irate. Finally his girlfriend convinces him to go to the campus health clinic to see if they can do anything for him. He first sees a nurse, who is fairly certain it is merely an inner-ear infection and gives him a prescription and sends him on his way. Of course, the medicine doesn’t help.

At this point, I’m frustrated for him. If I had a dollar for every time I went to a doctor and was misdiagnosed or they just couldn’t figure out what was causing me pain I’d be richer than Bill Gates. Okay, I wouldn’t be that rich. But I could probably afford to pay off all my student loans. On top of that, I’m feeling even more frustrated because before my mom was diagnosed with MS, they thought she had an inner-ear infection as well. I feel like if a doctor ever tells you that you have an inner-ear infection, you should probably get a second opinion and have more tests done because it’s probably something more severe than that.

He sees another doctor who recommends he goes to a neurologist. He has an MRI and they discover he has a brain malformation—a lesion on his brain near the brain stem that has probably been there all his life that had bled and stopped. With rest and a few extra precautions, he should be okay.

It seems the more the doctors tell him he’s improving, the less okay he really is. He deals with fits of rage, memory loss, and the continued blurred vision and dizziness. On top of that, he’s a college student, just trying to be normal and go to parties. So he drinks, he gets high, and it’s not really clear if doing those things helps to calm him down, makes no difference, or makes things worse.

His eccentric mother worries about him incessantly and is trying desperately to adjust to the changes in her son as he lashes out at her occasionally for no reason. At times she seems like a sweet woman who just wants what’s best for her family and other times she just seems downright crazy. He describes how she used to come to his high school baseball games and bring the wooden dining room chairs to sit in with a plate of “real food”.  Teenagers are generally embarrassed by their parents anyway, but then to have a parent act the way she did would probably be worse. Lemon’s teammates teased him about it often. Although he hasn’t said he is embarrassed by his mother, some of his actions say it for him.

So far, I love this book. It’s fantastic and the irony of the title (which is also his nickname) makes it that much better. Over and over he is called “Happy” even though there have been very few moments in the book where he seems truly happy (whether under the influence of drugs or otherwise). At this point in the book, things seem like they’re really turning around and he’s improving, but in my gut, I just know things will get worse. Although that’s partially because I’ve done a little research on Alex Lemon prior to reading this book. After all, that's what makes a good author and book: You know how it ends, and you still want to devour every page just to see how it gets there. Either way, I’m hooked and can’t wait to read the rest.