Rachel Hore

To The Bitter End

The Lemon Table

By

Jonathan Cape 213pp £16.99 order from our bookshop

AMONG THE CHINESE the lemon is a symbol of death, presumably because of its bitterness. The elderly German composer in ‘The Silence’, the final story in this unremittingly gloomy collection about old age and impending death, dines with the other old men at ‘the Lemon Table’ to talk about mortality. He looks back with sourness over his long and succful life: no memory pleases. The present is merely a period of waiting, punctuated by annoyance at those who enquire: When will your Eighth Symphony be finished? The only thing that lifts his heart is the flight of cranes – symbols of his lost boyhood. He wants to be buried with a lemon in his hand.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'The characters in many of these stories are trapped in the obsessive present tense of their own thoughts; in the m… ,
    • 'Libraries, for much of their existence, have embodied in microcosm many of the characteristics of the totalitarian… ,
    • 'Moss and Cynthia buy several properties through which to launder their ill-gotten gains, take lots of drugs, have… ,
    • 'Never mind the imperial cult. This is the cult of Boris. What happened to Rome?' From the LR archive:… ,
    • Thirty-two years ago this month, we published Muriel Spark's short story, 'A Playhouse Called Remarkable' Read it… ,
    • Time travel, bicycles and white horses populate @WomackPhilip's roundup of children's books by @marcussedgwick,… ,
    • RT : Joanna Kavenna’s ‘Cooking with Trotsky’s Frying Pan’ in June’s is the most well written and interesting… ,
    Follow Us